Win One, Have Two
by IHKF
Summary: With Isaac gone and Ed sent away to train, the club struggles to find some sense of normalcy, but so do Suzy and Collin- and the rest of the school; the monster attack on Mayview Middle has some interesting consequences. Isaac, meanwhile, struggles to atone for betraying his loved ones, and the mission is not without difficult and pain, not that he was expecting any less.
1. Chapter 1

_"...Just Home and Love! it's hard to guess_

 _Which of the two were best to gain;_  
 _Home without Love is bitterness;_  
 _Love without Home is often pain._  
 _No! each alone will seldom do;_  
 _Somehow they travel hand and glove:_  
 _If you win one you must have two,_  
 _Both Home and Love..."_

 _\- Home and Love by Robert William Service_

* * *

It was a grudge, but it was small, and even in all its feral glory, it was easy to catch. Isabel watched as it flicked its tail in irritation, little claws tapping about the bubble she'd formed around it, running in circles like a hamster in a cage. Part of her wanted to keep it, because it had a tiny face like a squirrel and a bushy round tail like a rabbit with a tummy as round as it was fluffy, but it would be frowned upon and she knew that. Besides, how was she to keep it home? It clearly wanted little to do with her and Dimitri, even as they bent to the forest floor and set the little guy free. It didn't so much as wiggle its nose at them before it was off with two other spirits equally as small and cute, presumably its family.

"There" she stood up and wiped the sweat from her brow. The hike up the grassy hill was more difficult than it would have been had she not been expending so much spectral energy. Dimitri raised a hand and high-fived her, turning on the way back to the clubroom. It was a half an hour walk, but it'd be easier the second time around. "It's nice to have you back!"

"Glad to be back" he grinned that sly way he always did, behind lidded eyes that seemed to be up to no good, which Dimitri certainly was. "Think we mighta spared that poor creature a real but-kicking back there. Had Max not accidentally stepped on its paw-"

"Hey!" They both jumped at the grainy voice in the walkie-talkie she'd nearly forgotten they'd had. "I had an arm full of books and it picked the wrong time to cross the hall!"

"Quite frankly you're lucky it didn't bite you." Dimitri snickered, one finger scratching his top lip.

There was a pause, and then: "Do… can spirits have rabies?"

Isabel tossed her head back and cackled, holding her sides and leaning into Dimitri, whose shoulders were trembling as he stifled his own bout of laughter.

"Good job, children!" Spender's voice was over the walkie talkie then, though Max's disturbed musings carried on in the background, faintly dying out as Spender was taller and the talkie was well above his mouth at that point. "Return to the clubroom so we can call it a day. Stay safe."

Max blinked up at Spender, who set the talkie aside on his desk, looking a little too pleased for his liking. He got it, he guessed, it'd been a month, but it still didn't sit well with him, and he was having a hard time seeing the world continue turning as though nothing had ever happened. Sure, there was a heaviness over the student- and teacher- body, and he felt that in the air and saw it in the wide, dull eyes of his peers, but nobody lost sleep because they felt like he did. "Does that happen often?" Spender hummed, smiling at Max, taking a seat, one hand reaching for a red pen, likely to grade tests. Max sat up from where he'd taken to slouching, propping himself up on the armrest. "How often do we take care of spirits and they don't end up in a tool?"

Spender tilted his head, smile softening in the way any adult's would when they were about to explain something they didn't think a child was ready to hear. "Well, it's more rare than one would hope, but not rare enough to make us the bad guys or anything!"

Silence fell over the room, companionable, at least more than it had been when he first started seeing shades and human-spirit-mad hybrids.

Max cocked an eyebrow. "That sounds like something a bad guy would say."

"I heard it."

Spender's smile flattened, and Max could almost see a level of exhaustion, even behind his glasses, but he turned away to mark off papers before Max could really catch a glimpse of it. He sighed and leaned further into the couch, crossing his arms over his chest and hoping that his hat hid his eyes, because he might have been projecting.

"We should arrange another search party this weekend." Spender's voice was perfectly level, like he'd rehearsed it thousands of times. "I want to be perfectly certain we've covered the entire forest."

Max nodded, then mumbled "Yeah."

He couldn't exactly tell him Isaac wasn't in Mayview anymore. It'd raise too many questions, questions he knew he couldn't- wouldn't- answer.

* * *

He plopped on the couch, legs splayed across Zoey's lap against her many (many, many, _many_ ) complaints, and took the remote in one lazy hand. Even the weight of that was a burden on his arms, which felt like dumbbells for some odd reason, and he guessed it was because he hadn't been sleeping well. He wasn't quite awake all hours of the early morning, but he more often than not awoke periodically, maybe two or three times, a night.

He yawned. All he wanted to do was kick back, watch some TV- if he ever managed to find a channel he felt like watching- and nap at his sister's expense. She was hitting his calves, but softly, enough to let him know she didn't want his feet on her, just not enough to actually, ya know, hurt him or have much of an effect at all. Then again, she was, like, seven; he doubted she could if she wanted to.

Nature? Boring. Paranormal? Extra boring. Sports? Max squinted. Nah.

He flipped through channel after channel, taking a moment each time to decide whether or not he wanted to kill his brain to the screams of a horror movie or the equally as grating screams of reality TV. He was starting to wonder if he really wanted to watch anything. Max yawned again and stretched, pressing the down button on the remote.

"In other recent news…" Blegh. Local news station. No, definitely not. He raised his hand to cut to a different channel, but a flash of orange caught his attention. "Missing child Isaac O'Connor is yet to be found." Zoey yelped as he swung his legs to the floor, leaning forward, edged to the front of the couch, turning the volume up as high as he could take it. The woman on screen shuffled her papers, chestnut hair bouncing over her shoulders as she turned to her partner. "Now, after forty-eight hours, the likelihood of catching the culprit drops significantly, right?"

Zoey frowned, lips pursing. "They haven't found him yet?

"Yes, Jan, it does, and unfortunately for this kid, it's been a month." The man, tall, dark, soft instead of brooding, set his forearm on the newsdesk. "Now, that's not to say there's no hope. There have been missing kid cases that have lasted years and they turned up."

Max swallowed hard. He shouldn't have been worried so much. It wasn't like Isaac had been kidnapped or something equally as horrific. Max knew he'd left of his own volition. To do what though? Doorman wouldn't tell him, wouldn't say a word, and that scared him like nothing else.

"Now, Mark, in a situation like this, what is the probability that this kid is alive?"

His heart dropped. Zoey leaned forward with him, crossing her legs and adjusting to lay more comfortably on the cushions. "Not likely."

Max punched her in the arm, harder than usual. She yelped and rubbed at the sore spot, nose scrunching up.

"I wonder what happened to that boy…" His dad moved into the room, hulling a large basket of laundry into the living room. He balanced on one leg, shutting the laundry room door behind him. Had his interest not been elsewhere, Max might have been impressed all of the clothes still looked their regular non-shrunken size. He'd been more careful about that lately, about everything. He plopped down on the couch, setting the basket down at his feet, and looked at the screen as he reached for the first piece of unfolded laundry. "Hey, Max, that boy was your friend, wasn't he?"

 _Was? Wasn't?_ The past tense did nothing to settle the growing pit of unease sifting through his stomach. His hand tightened around the remote. He couldn't meet his dad's eyes. "Uh, something like that…"

* * *

"Hah!" Pinning people was fun, Ed had decided, especially when they were older and weren't expecting him to knock them over like speeding locomotive. The kid below him had three years on him at Hashimoto's dojo, at least, and wasn't looking too pleased about his abdomen being under Ed's knee if the red of his face and the blood vessel threatening to pop at his temple were any indication. Ed gave his best grin as consolation, peeling back at Hashimoto's order.

"Finish. Well done, Ed." It wasn't rare to see the old man smile, but it was certainly contagious. The corners of his mustache- because you couldn't very well see his upper lip- would lift, and the crease of his brows, usually furrowed in concern, would have a lightness that matched his amused eyes.

Ed rubbed the back of his neck, tittering to himself. He still wasn't used to receiving praise. The whole _be an effective student_ thing was still shiny and new to him. "Well, it's 'cause I have something to fight for!" His smile dropped. "Also I had, like, a lot of soda before the match, like, so much soda. My bladder is about to combust."

"Aw!" Another student, who'd won the sparring match before his, a small but beefy girl who stood as tall as his waist (counting the volume of her pigtails) took a water bottle from the mini fridge one of the older kids had set at the foot of the staircase. (Hashimoto had been originally against the installation of such a cumbersome- his words- appliance, and now accepted it with grudging assent). She readjusted the white towel around her neck with one hand and smiled his way. "That's cute! Who is she?"

"Isabel!" He'd answered before he'd taken the flowers and hearts in her eyes into account, before he realized exactly what he was answering to. "She's my best friend!"

"Yeah," she hummed and let her head fall back to take a few large gulps of her water, then shook her head like a wet sweaty dog and went for the staircase. "That's how my dad fell for my mom, too."

He froze, and if his cheeks hadn't already been flushed from the workout, they would have been as red as Isabel's aura, anyway. He rubbed desperately at either side of his face, trying in vain to wipe away the evidence. "I-I'm not in love with her!"

The other student giggled and carried her weight up the stairs. "Not yet, maybe."

* * *

They'd been out on the streets of Mayview, in every district imaginable, he was sure, since school let out, and it would have been longer had the Vice Principal not caught Suzy snooping around near the front entrance during lunch. Collin sighed, moving his arms and the papers in them so that the pile wouldn't hit the ground and go flying in the wind. She'd kill him, and he knew it. "Hey, um, quick question?"

"Yeah?"

"What the flip is this actually accomplishing?" He motioned to the poster she was currently hammering into a telephone pole, trying not to pay attention to the face he knew was plastered to each one. Isaac's face. Under big bold text that read "Missing", like it wasn't already all over the news. Isaac's parents had money- a lot of it, and they were putting it into action. That's why Suzy, in all of her rare good intentions, wasn't really accomplishing anything. Well, one of the reasons. Suzy ignored him, and he took another breath and continued. "Max said he's not even in Mayview anymore. How is this helping anyone?"

She didn't respond again, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek to keep from making another remark. She never made any sense, no matter how hard he tried to unravel the mess that was the bane of his considerably short existence. He didn't even know why he tried anymore, let alone why he took the challenge in the first place. He fixed the pile of missing posters in his arms again, pressing one palm up on the bottom of the stack, but still felt some pieces sliding out of his grip regardless. He went to say something again, but Suzy chose then to finish her handwork and admire it.

"Fall break is coming up, right?"

"Huh? I, uh, I guess-"

"And other people have families outside of Mayview that they may be visiting," She gestured to the missing poster, hanging, though crooked. "Thus, posters."

"Suzy-!"

"There's a chance that somebody could see him. Not everybody watches the local news, Collin!"

He opened his mouth to argue with her, but for once? He sighed. It wasn't worth it. Suzy hadn't been so passionate about something important, something personal, in a long time. Somebody, eventually, might rip it from her, but he would not be the one to tear up her sole force for good. She continued on her way down the sidewalk, seemingly unaware of the setting sun drifting over the horizon and kissing their chance to make curfew goodbye. "Suzy, stop."

She whipped around, arms crossed, cheeks puffed, like a child throwing a tantrum. "Why?"

He fixed the papers in his arms again, but it was less about convenience and more about her attention. He smiled and held them up a little higher. "We should probably print more of these."

* * *

He didn't enjoy doing it, in fact it went against his moral code in some aspect, probably, maybe. Isaac reached up from the side of the trashcan, fingers gracing the food tray that the tall, skinny, lanky man beside him was disposing of. His attention was away for the moment, eyes latched to his newborn daughter who was sitting- er, standing- a few feet away on the table he'd taken for his wife and child. His wife, as attentive as a mother had to be, might have noticed Isaac slinking around a trash bin, or the hand he reached to the piece of bread sitting atop the otherwise devoured plates of food; she was too busy holding their toddler, keeping her wobbling legs steady in the face of a potential fall from a table top only a few feet off the ground. Both parents laughed, one urging the other to hurry and record it, because their baby was going to be a dancer and they were sure of it. Isaac took the bread in a shaking hand, then bolted down the windowless side of the restaurant before the man could notice his uneaten bread had somehow disappeared.

* * *

Sometimes he wondered if Doorman would be mad at him, if the way he'd gone about feeding himself the last month was, in any way, an act of aggression. Probably. Maybe. He tried not to think about it. He took a bite of it as he sat himself under the roof of a bus stop, lounging and spreading his legs out so he was more comfortable. It wasn't like he'd taken it from a plate not-yet finished. The bread would have been tossed anyway. Even so... Isaac exhaled, leaning back, settling his head, watching each passing car in his peripheral.

He didn't know where he was, what time it was- aside from the stars going on for yards and miles and lightyears over his head- or the month, week, day. It didn't really matter. There was no timeline for his mission, and no end to it, not a foreseeable one, anyway. He swallowed the first bite. Stale. He looked down at it and shrugged. He wasn't expecting much else. That was the way life on the road worked. He was surprised nobody had caught him yet, tried to drag him back to his home, not that anybody would have known where that was. He didn't try to buy things, and the baths he took were often in fast food joint sinks a little past midnight, so it wasn't like he'd had a lot of interaction with any adult that might have their suspicions about the dirty thirteen-year-old roaming around the country on his own. He wondered how far he was, sometimes, not often, but he never let himself linger on it. Distance, like how long he'd been gone, didn't matter. He wouldn't be coming home.

There was a scream, a squeal, something not quite human fighting something also probably not human. Isaac sighed and stuffed the rest of the bread in his pocket for later. He had something to atone for.


	2. Chapter 2

She'd turned the radio on in the background, just to listen to it as she practiced her spec shots. The noise was nice, distracted her from the way her shots hit the mark and echoed in the training area. It wasn't supposed to be so quiet. Everything- everything- had been too quiet lately.

She was only hardly aware of her grandfather's shift into the room, only knew because there was no feeling more grating than his eyes scrutinizing her every move. She wanted to blame her irritation on him, blame it all on how he threw off her game, her concentration. She took another shot as the last words of a current Top 10 track faded out, stopping momentarily until the DJ realized he had dead air and fixed it.

"Oh! Aaand there we have it! Gee-Man's _Miss You Girl_ , as requested! Now, Josie, we have any weekend updates?"

"You bet we do!" A woman's voice, though chipper and bubbly, was mature and somehow mellow, not as grating as Isabel had been anticipating. "There are reports of accidents on 45 and Mayview Way, so if you're aiming to get out of the city, South is probably going to be your best bet." Isabel huffed and raised her fingers again, aiming at a target to her right, where her grandfather wasn't standing and seething with complaints and critiques. "Dannis Gibbsy is engaged to Laurel Con- I mean, we all saw it coming after that season finale, but still." She couldn't quite find the mark, and it seemed the more she concentrated, the less certain her shot felt. She grimaced, tightening her posture and straightening up, telling herself again and again to _just take the stupid shot_. "And as for missing child Isaac O'Connor, police are yet to find any trace. If you have information please call in at-" Her lip curled. "His picture is up on our website. If you think you've seen Isaac O'Connor, once again, call-"

The shot hit the target by the bullseye, and blew it all up in a pit of red aura, like flame and electricity- like a surge of power. She might have screamed when she let the shot go, and that might have been the cause of the twitch- very slight, gone the next moment- in her grandfather's eye. Isabel wiped away at the sweat along her forehead, and Master Guerra took a step closer. He was laughing, that genuine belly laugh that used to make Isabel giggle because it was such a happy sound; it annoyed her, now. "Very well, Isabel! Job well done! You must be training hard!"

She glanced at him from the side with lidded eyes, not even bothering to turn her head, as her wrist wiped the sweat from the edge of her face. "Yeah," he watched her as she straightened up and turned for the stairs, grabbing the towel she'd brought down and slinging it over her shoulders. She needed a shower, some soup, and a move she could turn on while she lounged around and ate chips for the remainder of the day. "Maybe."

* * *

Isabel sighed and ran the fresh towel through her hair, humming as she padded into her room, shutting the door behind her with the heel of her foot. The hot water had been soothing against her sore muscles, and perhaps even more soothing against whatever mood had been boiling in her before. Irritation had become a friend of hers lately, one that visited unannounced and stuck around until she did something, anything, to kick it from her system until the next day; usually this meant training overtime. It was all she could do to stay sane, not blow up on Max or Dimitri or Ed or even Mister Spender. She'd been overly sensitive (for her, anyway), she knew it, she just didn't know why.

Isabel ran the towel over the roots of her hair, lips coming together to smile as she tilted her head back and enjoyed the feel of her nails massaging her scalp. She'd needed that.

Now to just figure out what she wanted to watch…

The familiar ring of her cellphone and the resulting vibration from her nightstand made her head whip around, eyebrow raising, smile forming, as she crossed her room to get to it, leaving her towel to hit the floor (she'd hang it up later). She almost hoped it was a mission, or maybe some kind of investigation job. She could use the fresh air.

Isabel grabbed the phone and snapped it open with one flick of her wrist, bringing it to her ear without looking at the number. "Hello?"

"What's up, my Iz-dog?"

She snorted. "Ed!" She raised a hand to stifle the little bit of surprised laughter, but she was sure he heard it anyway. "Hey! What's up?"

"Waiting around for training to start. Homeschool is not as fun as you'd think it would be. Not a single one of my teachers let me wear pajamas to class, and only one let me go back to bed when I was done with my work," She snorted again, but let the her laughter run free so he could hear it. He probably wanted to, was probably trying to make her laugh "and that was only because I accidentally threw a paper airplane at their eye."

"Ed."

"It wasn't my fault! Once those things are out of your hand, they are _out of your hand_. I had no idea a paper airplane would become an issue of class safety and not conduct."

She shook her head and plopped down on the side of her bed, leaning back to rest her hand on the other edge of her twin. "Any clue when you're coming to visit?"

"Uh," she could imagine him leaning against the wall of Master Hashimoto's training room, one hand in the pocket of his jeans, head lulling to the side the way it always did when he was tired. She was willing to bet he had less energy than before, now that he was actually putting effort into his training. She wondered if he had time to play video games anymore, now that he didn't have to go to and from Hashimoto's and Guerra's an hour both ways. He always had enough time to call her- once a day, no less. She was thankful, though she would have preferred seeing him in person. "Not sure! But I'm aiming to visit next weekend!"

"Really?" She shot up, then immediately clamped a hand over her mouth. That was too excited, too happy, too much. Her cheeks burned, but she kept her lips shut like she'd glued them. As much as she trusted Ed, as much as she knew he was a safe place and he would never, ever make fun of her… Isabel sighed and fell back against her comforter, a smile inching across her lips. "That's great! You know, you should bring your console back for the weekend. We never did beat that boss from-"

"Yeah!" He sounded as ecstatic as she felt, and it was a giddiness and a lightness she hadn't been accustomed to in a long time, enough that it unnerved her. "So, what's been up over there?"

She snickered. "Oh, I am so glad you asked…"

* * *

Isaac's phone was probably long dead by now. Max knew this.

It didn't stop him from staring at Isaac's contact information, squinting at it, hoping not-quite-consciously that there'd be some hint to go off of, some huge clue he was missing that could lead them right to him. There wasn't. Max shut his phone and let the hand hang leisurely over the side, staring up at the ceiling, waiting for the urge to get up or go to sleep or something to hit him. All that came was unease, the sense that something was horribly, horribly wrong. It'd been that way since Isaac skipped town, but he'd managed to quash the feeling most of the day. It was just when nightfall came, and his dad was off doing whatever and Zoey was off doing something super-whatever, that he was left alone with his thoughts and that unease had a hand in all of them.

How was he eating? How was he drinking? Where did he sleep? Was he hurt?

Max groaned lifted his other forearm over his eyes, like blocking the light of his room would do anything. Those thoughts weren't daylight or nightlight manifestations and he knew it. They were always there, had been for the last month, beating on the back of his mind the way an annoying remix of a good song would stick with him.

And it all stemmed from the sinking feeling he had when he ran up the steps to that abandoned home and found only Doorman there.

 _I hurt Dimitri, could have hurt all of you, too._

 _I wanted you to hate me. I thought it was the only way to get you all to see me as something other than the club mascot…_

 _Because I couldn't take the blame like I should have, I stepped way out of line and broke my own oath. Well, now I'm ready._

Max grinded his teeth, hand thrown across her face clenching.

 _I guess this is goodbye. Thanks for keeping me around while you did._

He rolled over to his side, making the decision to pass out before the unsettled hole is his stomach got any worse.

* * *

Meditating had gotten easier, way easier. He could balance without trouble nowadays, and Master Hashimoto rarely had to step in and readjust his limbs so that he was working his core more. He walked with a straight back more often than he slumped, and slept easier, too. The only issue laid with his concentration- it ran from him and often times he felt like a hunter down on his luck. Some days were better than others, but the last week had been… particularly grueling. He tried to keep his mind on Isabel, on the lessons he'd learned since joining Hashimoto, but his mind would wander, and he'd start to feel agitated, and then-

Ed yelped as something hard and hollow knocked him upside the head, knocking him right off the plank of wood. He landed on his chin, legs up in the air, waving around as he struggled to catch up with reality. Ed winced and pressed the palms of his hands against the floor, pushing himself to sit up on his knees, then raised one hand to the sore spot at the back of his head. _So much for being balanced._ "Ow! Hey! What was that for?"

Master Hashimoto stood towering over him from behind, looking gruff with the scrunch of his mustache and the unamused, narrowed look of his eyes.

Ed pouted at him, crossing his legs to sit more comfortably. Hashimoto came around to stand in front of him, placing the cane before himself and setting either hand at the tip of its shiny knob.

"You would not have fallen had you not already been unbalanced." Ed exhaled and leaned back against the plank of wood, hands gripping at his calves. Hashimoto tilted his head. "I sense there is something troubling you."

"It's one of the other students." He knew better than to keep things from his master. At best it would delay the inevitable, and he didn't care to go through so many emotional hoops for the second time that year. "She said that I liked Izzy, like, like-liked her. I mean, that's ridiculous! I grew up with her! She's like a sister to me!"

Hashimoto hummed, fingers brushing against his long, flowing beard, which Ed often joked with the other students looked more like a well-groomed dog's tail- a show dog, the kind that got paraded around.

"Well, Ed, if you were confident in that, you wouldn't still be thinking about it."

No. Not him, too. Not even the freaking master!

Ed parted his lips to say something, but whatever was heating the blood under his cheeks was doing a good job of clogging his throat, too, and he dropped his pointed finger and clamped his mouth shut.

* * *

"Suzy."

"Hmm?"

"Maybe you should lay off on the tea" Collin said this as he poured her another cup.

Suzy took it in grateful hands, then tilted it up to take the smallest, innocent sip from its rim. It was black breakfast tea, her favorite, and she took it bitter more often than not, no cream or honey or even a small bag of splenda. "It's calming."

"It's caffeinated, just like coffee, and you've downed, like, ten mugs of it."

Suzy grunted and raised one hand to wave him off, which Collin granted with a roll of his eyes, retreating to the desk to set the eighth thermos down, mumbling to himself about the rush of energy he was awaiting with no great excitement. Suzy, on the other hand, was far more preoccupied with the taste, taking a moment each sip to roll the flavor on her tongue before taking another sip and repeating. She had to concentrate on that. Had to.

There was a knock at the door, and they both lifted their heads, momentarily distracted from the nothingness that was their schedule, and looked at it.

"Collin-"

"Already on it."

Suzy sighed and went back to sipping her tea. The journalism club hadn't gotten any visitors, not that she was surprised. Nobody had taken her up on her offers to publish their personal watched-my-life-flash-before-my-eyes story, and Collin had informed her multiple times on multiple occasions that they never would; though she'd been stubborn to admit it, Suzy had come around to admitting that Collin might have been right, and maybe people didn't want to relive that sort of thing for a school newspaper. She doubted it was a story at the door, and even if it was, the school didn't seem to be keeping up with club hours anymore- not since the monster attack.

She took another sip, though she swallowed without tasting it first.

Collin opened the door and- surprise, surprise- Maxwell Puckett stood on the other side, one of Suzy's posters, the ones for Isaac, in hand, and held it up to his face. She blinked. "Hey, Max."

"Hi, Suzy. Quick question." He wriggled the poster around, glancing over her curled form almost sardonically with a twitch in his eye. His posture was stiff, like he was sore and he was trying not to move too much or he'd hiss, and his fingers seemed to have long-since wrinkled the top edges of the poster- a sign he was gripping it tighter than need be. "What good is this doing, exactly?"

Suzy huffed and set the mug down, setting her feet, which had been curled with her in the chair, to the floor as she stood up, patting out her shorts. "Well, it's something."

Collin sighed and let Max in, shutting the door behind him with a narrowed, almost annoyed, look on his face. "Do yourself a favor and don't get her started on that."

"I already told you guys. He's not in Mayview anymore!"

"Well, do you have any better ideas?

"No! But wasting this much paper" Max shook the poster around for emphasis "probably isn't helping anyone!"

Suzy balled her fists, rage coiling in her, heat rushing to her face and her hands and her eyes. She opened her mouth to say something, anything, back, just to defend herself and what she was doing, but Collin slipped a hand over her lips; against her better judgement, she let him silence her. He sighed, and glanced between herself and Max until he was sure he had the attention of both. "Okay, how about we all just agree that these posters aren't really helping," he looked at her, and she leveled him with a glare "but it's all we can do" He looked to Max, who scowled and glanced to the floor, lips thin.

After a moment, Max's eyes met hers, and she saw an uncertainty where before she'd seen irritation, a lack of confidence she didn't think she'd ever seen in Maxwell Puckett before. Though he hid it well, his jaw clenched, and she could feel his aura looming over them, even if she couldn't see it. It was an itch. His eyes drifted downward, to the poster in his hand, then to the floor again, and her eyes did the same. Collin lifted his hand from her mouth, and she mumbled. "How is Dimitri doing?"

Max blinked, eyes wider for a second as though surprised, but a small smile found its way to his face, even if it wasn't as genuine as he might've liked her to believe. "He's doing all right! He's fitting into the club like a glove!"

Suzy nodded and excused herself for a moment to get more hot, bitter tea.

* * *

Mayview was as sunny as she remembered it, though she'd always preferred it when the city was cold and overcast in the nigh of winter. Sometimes, when she had a moment to herself, she'd visit, like so. After all, she'd spent a great many years calling it home.

It was the place she hated most.

She brushed a strand of loose hair behind her ear, breathing in the scent of fall, which still smelled as she remembered it for Mayview- Pumpkin, a few days closer to expiration than one usually preferred, alongside the dull spices and the staleness of the cold air that'd always swept her into dreaming of snow days, though she knew they were months away. It was a feeling she'd known intimately for other reasons as of late, the anticipation of something coming, the drive that'd been motivating her so long.

Then the sight of Mayview from the tallest hill faded, and she found with no sense of distress that the world around her had become clustered with holes in the sky in shades of deep blues and purples and tears in shades of black only she knew existed.

"Catriona."

She hummed, but did not turn her head.

Strong arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her into a toned chest where she could feel a familiar heartbeat against the hammering of her own. "Something is bothering you, my love."

"Whether they're willing or not" she frowned and nibbled at her bottom lip "I simply can't find it in myself to kill these spirits for the sake of our mission."

He hummed, sound similar to her own in its sweetness but deeper in its rumble. "It is for the greater good, you must remember that. They see the way you and I do." He pressed a kiss to her cheek, and a treacherous smile found her. "Though, I'd find it hard to believe anyone may resist you."

"Emmerich, you flatter me." She twisted in his arms, wrapping her own around his neck and leaning into him. He was tall, taller than many men, though he stood like one, with claws round but sharp on each finger. His skin, though splotched with the same shades as his universe, was soft and felt as human as her own. She ran her hands over his head, one hand using its fingers to weave through the silk that was his cyan hair, wrapped in a horse tail. He smiled at her, and her eyes glossed over his black teeth. "We've already failed our first mission, what is to stop us from failing again?"

"Experience, my love" His hands squeezed her hips, a physical affirmation "and we did not fail. It may take more than one attempt, but it will be done."

She leaned up, and he leaned down, and she pressed her lips to his. There was no caution, no exploration- he was a part of her, and they knew each other better than anyone else.

* * *

Isaac winced as he laid down across another bus stop in what should have been another neighborhood. He was moving slowly, but that wasn't a problem when he had no destination. _What is a problem is this cut on my arm. That spirit really took a swing at me._ He glanced down at it, wincing as he took in the cold sting of blood, dying the material of his shirt a deep red. It'd stopped running a good hour ago, but it still stung like nothing he'd had before, and he'd have a hard time sleeping with it.

What was there to do about it?" He cautiously ran a finger over the wound, and hissed when the stinging multiplied. He'd have to steal bandages from somewhere. But where? A hospital? He couldn't do that! Other people, possibly worse off than him, needed those bandages and needed that ointment, and he couldn't very well walk into the clinic. That came with a mass of questions he wouldn't be able to answer, or even begin to think about answering. Isaac sighed and leaned upwards. He'd just have to figure it out come the morning.

* * *

Cheesesteak subs were a gift from God to men, and there were few things Spender was so vehemently convinced of. Day seemed equally as enthralled with her food, and she chomped more than happily into their late lunch- his treat. It was a shame the meeting wasn't under less dire circumstances. Though each bite of his food was delicious, there was a sour taste to the back of his throat. Of course there would be something wrong, something he'd have to fix, and it would take time to figure out just how to go about doing that- which wouldn't have been so bad, had he ever been in Time's favor. Day looked up, and he met her with a smile, though he knew she couldn't see it.

"So, Mister Spender, have you found that missing student of yours yet?"

He paused before taking another bite, licking his lips because they suddenly felt dry, and sighed. "No, I'm afraid I haven't."

Day paused in her bite, too, a small frown forming on her face. Her brows furrowed, and she tilted her head. "Oh. I'm so sorry."

"It's fine, it's fine." It wasn't. "Have you made any progress in your research? I know you've finished interviewing the student body recently. Did you find anything worth noting?" Perhaps it was too cut and dry, too to-the-point, but he needed to- had to- change the subject.

She blinked, and for a moment he thought he'd been too forward. Day's head tilted, and then she chomped into her sub, chewed, and swallowed hard before fixing him with a smile. "You trust me to be truthful?"

"Well, it's my school. I'll be finding out regardless."

"Yes, I suppose that's true! Hm hm!" She giggled and set her food down, using the napkin she'd set in her lap to wipe excess grease from her hands. "Especially with the magnitude of my findings."

His heart dropped. He'd been expecting something, of course, but he hadn't anticipated… well, something of great consequence. _What could she have possibly gotten from a bunch of students scared senseless?_ "Oh? What did you find?"

"Well, the entire school, including your peers, Mister Spender, is traumatized."

Was that all? He exhaled, expelling all of the tension that'd strung up his neck and shoulders, let himself relax. "Oh, well, while that isn't good, it is what I expected. Trauma or not, we're going to have to come up with a really good excuse to explain why those things attacked our school" he looked to his sub, fingers tapping along the bun on either side "and what they were."

Day continued to smile at him, setting the napkin onto the table and leaning forward. "I'm afraid you won't have to make excuses, Mister Spender. We're well past that, unfortunately." He looked back to her, then, eyebrows furrowed, lips parting to ask for clarification. She set her chin in her hands, still, somehow, smiling even as the importance of her words hung over him, potentially like a guillotine. "From my findings, I've concluded that 70-80% of Mayview Middle have begun exhibiting early signs of paranatural ability."


	3. Chapter 3

He'd been rummaging through the dumpster for the better half of an hour, cautiously at first, then impatient. Isaac winced as he took the moment to heave another cardboard box out of the way to get to what was below it, pausing to skim over the address on the side.

 _Saint Joseph's Walk-In-Clinic._

It took him awhile to find the place, and even longer to locate the dumpster- at the side and not the back- but he was on no time limit, at least not a fatal one… he didn't think. Isaac took a deep breath and stood a little taller, as much as his bruised knees would let him, and pressed deeper into the mess of used band-aids, vomit-covered tissues, and candy wrappers. Quite frankly, he was surprised he hadn't unintentionally run a needle straight through his skin, yet. He'd been overly aware of every little disgusting piece of used clinic equipment, but that was the one thing he was yet to find- that, and the bandages he was looking for.

The tips of his fingers brushed against something soft and firm, like a sturdy cloth; he gripped and pulled.

It was indeed a bandage, and- though it was covered in blood upon further inspection- it would do just fine. Isaac cringed, doing his best not to touch the contents directly as he stuffed it all into his pocket.

Each step he took to approach the front was small, and nervous, and he continually glanced around to be sure nobody had seen him snooping (as they would probably assume the worst of him, even if there apparently wasn't a single needle in there). He peeked around the corner and waited for whoever had just pulled in to cross the threshold of the clinic, then pressed on to his next location- a private sink.

* * *

Well, the next best thing was a water fountain in an otherwise abandoned park. There was a nicer one across the street, he'd noted, so he'd more than likely be left to his own devices. He pressed down on the button with his stomach and used both hands to run the bandages under the cold drinking water, rubbing his thumbs along the blood and watching as red caressed and floated into blue, becoming almost pink on its journey down the metal bowl and into the drain.

There was a lot of it, more than he'd counted on, but he was nothing if not stubborn. Pressing his lips together, Isaac leaned forward and rolled the bandages, squeezing the blood and cleaning them more forcefully, hands becoming rougher to rid them of as much as he could. He couldn't leave a drop behind or risk making his injuries worse. The last thing he wanted was to end up in an emergency room, trying to explain to a room full of cops and doctors just what had happened to him and why he was a handful of cities away from home. He took a breath. _Relax, Isaac. We're not there yet. We're a month in and we've done a pretty good job looking after ourselves, right? Right._

And it had been just him; King C hadn't been much help since he left, hadn't spoken to him in a while, and when he had he'd tried to get Isaac to turn around- to go home. Why? Well, he hadn't much of a clue. King C hated Spender and hated the club and hated Doorman, so why he would possibly care that his "vessel" wasn't in the same town anymore was beyond him.

It wasn't like he was worried about him.

He pulled away from the faucet, holding the bandages to the side and wringing them as much as he could of the remaining water. Liquid came gushing out, mixed with whatever was left of the blood from before, and seeped into the grass and dirt at his feet. It wasn't until it was only hardly dripping that Isaac sighed and pulled the neck of his hoodie and his shirt down to take his injured arm out of its sleeve. _Gross, but it's better than nothing, I guess._ With a grunt, he began wrapping it around the abrasion on his upper arm, wincing as the soggy, sloppy bandage stuck to his skin like a freezing sticker and leaked what little water was left, wetting the rest of his limb and some of his torso. "Ugh… yuck." Yeah, that was a little harder to deal with than he'd anticipated, but it wasn't like he had a choice.

He had to keep moving. Isaac fixed his shirt and hoodie, then stuck his hands in his pockets, turning for the exit he'd mapped out on his way in. It'd happened to him before, in his time away from Mayview, that he'd gotten lost in an unfamiliar area- he'd been out of the city maybe once or twice before, and that had been by plane. If he was going to keep from dying alone in a dense wilderness, it was in his best interest to keep an eye on the entrance. Something snapped behind him, and he blinked; it was also, perhaps, in his best interest to stay aware of his surroundings- especially if he was being followed.

He glanced over his shoulder, saw nothing, and continued onward.

* * *

He was a man, yes, but she wouldn't have placed him any older than 19, 20. He certainly wasn't old enough to have a bottle of whiskey in his hand, or to be falling all over the place, hollering at innocent spirits doing nothing to him. He waved his bottle around, fumbling towards the small, helpless spirits as they floated along, no bigger than the size of his head, round with big beady black eyes and literal button noses. They moved away from him, but he grew closer each time they did. She hummed, and approached him cautiously. Smiling offhandedly to the spirits, she tapped him on the shoulder three times.

"If they wanted to hurt you, they'd have done it by now."

He whipped around to look at her, eyes wide, stumbling over himself because he'd lost a balance she wasn't sure he'd had to begin with. Broad-shouldered, she noted, lots of muscles, must have been an athlete. Football? Wrestling? It didn't matter, she was just curious.

"I-I'm n-not talkin' t' the trees."

"I know. You're talking to the spirits," she tilted her head "which I'm going to assume is the reason you're downing Captain Jack."

He dropped the bottle with a laughable start, eyes wide and mouth ajar. It hit his foot and popped to the dirt he'd made tracks in falling all over himself. He would be fine; she would make him fine. His lips wobbled, trying to get words out, failing, and his legs hobbled, trying to move away- move forward- she wasn't sure even he knew. "Wh… you can see-?" He cleared his groggy throat. "You can see 'em?"

"Yes, I can" she gave him her best smile, a familiar one, one she cringed to know she'd once used blindly, like a fool, to get ahead in a world she had yet to understand was full of evil "My name is Catriona, and if you'd like, I could help you with all of that fear you're harboring… if you help me"

* * *

She was waiting there at the bottom of the staircase for him, looking bored, umbrella in her backpack, sticking out, much like her. Max wished he could say he was surprised, but he never was. She glanced up at him as he started his trek down the stairs, and he nodded to her.

Zoey probably ignored their parting, but his dad waved and gave them a "hope you have a good day", which honestly never had an effect on anybody's day in the history of ever, but he and Isabel waved back like they always did.

It had been like this since Isaac left. Ed went off to go train, Dimitri was on the other side of town- and Max seemed to be the only one constantly seething about their missing club mascot and that whole situation- but anyway Isaac wasn't there, and so that left two, him and her. She was lonely (even though she wouldn't admit it for the life of her or her grandfather or, heck, Mister Spender), and he was in a never-ending state of concern, so they walked together, kept an eye on each other. Max was, after all, sure that Ed would literally slaughter him if he let Isabel go about being sad and mopey. Honestly, Dimitri did a better job at keeping her… distracted… than he did, but he figured the the long walk to school was the hardest hitter for her.

He knew what it was like to be alone in your thoughts for excrutiatingly long periods of time.

"How'd you sleep?"

Isabel laughed nervously and rubbed the back of her neck. "Umm, heh, uh…"

"Up late, then?" Max cocked an eyebrow, watching with some surmountable interest as her cheeks grew rosy.

"Oh, no… no… not really, no. Just talked to Ed for a little while and couldn't get to sleep after."

If he'd learned anything about Isabel, it was that she was an unreliable narrator, and that she absolutely, no question, stayed up all night talking to Ed.

He snorted and stuck his hands in his pockets, eyeing her in his peripheral, grin itching across his face- and if her glare was any indication, she could see it. "Oh I'm sure."

"Max."

"Isabel."

"Max" She grimaced, one hand hovering above her face as she inhaled, then running over it as she exhaled. "I was up for another reason."

"Why are you getting so defensive?" He chuckled and dodged the fist flying at his chest, ducking then sidestepping to get out of punching radius. She'd never hurt him, but he still didn't want to see how close she'd come to leave a bruise. "You were up late talking to your best friend! What's so hard to admit about that?"

"Because I'm telling the truth! He called me right before training started! We only had, like, an hour to talk! I was up late because- because-!"

He looked at her head-on, the best example of his irritating, mocking, maddeningly-sly grin to date on the brink of delivery, when he noticed her eyes had fallen elsewhere, and she didn't seem too preoccupied with him anymore. He dropped the smirk and looked over his shoulder, morbidly curious if one asked. It was rare to knock the fire out of Isabel so squarely, so cleanly, and he had to admit he was almost dreading whatever lied over his shoulder.

He swallowed hard when he saw it- Isaac's face. He'd forgotten that Suzy's posters were splayed all over the city, that she wasn't planning on letting anybody forget Isaac O'Connor, and all at once he was reminded that he did, indeed, have something to be distracted from, too.

He bit his tongue, then sighed, slowly, softly, low enough to not be heard. "Do you think he's okay?"

"Who cares?"

Max started; he hadn't been expecting quite that response.

He turned back to her, eyes wide, mouth open and not working, to see that she'd long since directed her gaze to the sidewalk ahead of them, or maybe the school in the distance. She was icy, and nonchalant, like she hadn't even known Isaac, like those darkened, narrowed eyes of hers had never even seen him before. "He betrayed us then left on his own to get attention. He made that choice," she shrugged, turning her head away so he couldn't see her face anymore "as far as I'm concerned, he can stay gone."

Right. Of course. They weren't close in the first place. Why should he expect her to worry about him? As it was, he had no idea why he was giving himself gray hairs- he was even less familiar with the kid. Still…

Max turned to the ground, eyes narrowing, hands clenching dangerously around the straps of his bag.

* * *

He'd been right. He was being followed. From the length of his trip from the park to the empty highways alongside dense forests- he was in a scope he didn't want to be in.

Isaac winced, landing roughly on the soles of his shoes, falling onto his rear so hard he could feel his tailbone nearly break. He covered his mouth before he could react- no sound. If somebody heard him, they'd find him; if they found him, they'd turn him in- but before that, they'd get hurt.

After all, Isaac turned his eyes from his torn up jeans and the equally as torn legs beneath them to the monster hovering over him.

Just like the others before, it was bloody, and it had teeth in its eyes the length of one of his arms, with one mouth that spanned nearly half of its lower horizontal length, filled with ectoplasm and disconnected sharp teeth, and skin that was perpetually melting somehow, like its body was made of slime. It moved forward on four claws on either side, each individual one the length of his upper body.

He pulled back with one hand, raising his other to spout off some electricity, something! Anything! But only a small ball of lightning sparked in his hand, dying just as quickly as it lived. He grunted. His powers were dying, and he had some idea why. Glancing down at his stomach between moments where he used his legs to propel his body backwards, he could catch a glimpse of the deep, open wound in his abdomen. It hurt like nothing he'd ever felt before, had his lower body sore and his exposed skin stinging, burning, flaring and dying the more he pressed on.

The monster swung at him, and he only just missed the impact of a claw at his face.

Isaac pressed back some more, and more, until his back was against a tree, and the only place left to go was right or left.

He set one hand, gently, at his open wound and grimaced.

Right or left? If he went right, he'd be running straight into the city, potentially leading the monster into innocent civilian territory. Not only would that lead to the potential deaths and injuries of dozens of people, but he had a feeling whatever organization Spender worked for would have to step in… and if he got caught in that…

Left. There was only open road for miles, and it would take him about fifteen minutes to get to a city, and therefore leave his wounds unattended to for a longer period of time, but he had a chance to lose the monster and get to safety and get to the next town.

Yeah. Left.

He should have made the decision quicker- just a second, just a moment, and he might have gotten out of the way in time.

He went to move just as the monster's claw came down on his head, on his face- on his eye. He was lucky enough to miss the brunt of it, but it still grazed him, left his eye bleeding, left him worse than before.

"Augh!" He fell forward, but caught himself on one hand, using it to push himself back on his feet again, and he bolted. The monster screamed after him, and he heard its claws digging into the ground, pulling grass apart and making hills and holes behind him as he ran. He choked on the air and pressed one arm to his abdomen, holding it there and keeping as much pressure on it as possible.

He had to get away.

* * *

Afternoon patrol had been uneventful, much like usual, and thus Max was quick to go for his backpack upon entering the clubroom with Isabel and Dimitri.

The three of them hadn't spoken much- er, Max hadn't spoken to the two of them much. He would have been lying if he said he wasn't still harboring some irritation at Isabel for earlier, for brushing Isaac off like that, for being so- so- he grimaced and swung his bag over his shoulder with malice, like it'd been the one that'd done him wrong.

"Why don't I walk you home today, Iz?" Iz, not Izzy, like Ed called her. Max had noticed the difference in Dimitri after the first week or so of him joining the club again. He was cool, sometimes unreasonably chill, and that was just another one of his quirks. He was yet to assign a cute short nickname to Max, but Max had the sneaking- call it crazy- suspicion that "Max" was too short a name to cut a pet name from. Not that he wanted one.

"Sure!" She smiled at Dimitri as they both came to a stand after bending down to grab their things, and both waved, said their goodbyes, and left before Max could even catch up with reality. His mind was elsewhere, and as it usually had been, it was difficult to pull that rope back from the edge of the very open sea. He felt distant, almost, like his mind was somewhere out there, outside the barrier, and his body was stuck in Mayview. He hadn't been able to get his mind off of it, off of the monsters or off of Isaac or much of anything. It was really too much stress for a twelve-year-old, but there wasn't exactly anybody to pin the blame on. There was nobody for a parent to go yell at, nobody to wag a finger at, because he wasn't stressing over homework, or about an unfair test grade, or even about an exam worth way more than was reasonable for for his grade- he was thinking about ectoplasm and blood in the halls, and the broken look in Isaac's eyes last time he'd seen him, and the how's and why's and the secrets he was keeping and-!

"Max?"

He snapped back to reality, to Mister Spender standing over him with a warm, awkward smile, and a hand waving in front of his face. He turned pink, and Spender stood up straight, hand dropping to his side. "Why haven't you left yet? Afternoon patrol is over, Max. You're free to go?"

"Oh, uh… yeah" He looked to the floor, one hand at the side of his neck, fingers nestling into the warmth of his hoodie. "I wanted to ask a question."

Spender seemed relieved, the furrows of his brow unfolding and the concern in his smile fading until it was just his regular happy-go-lucky grin. "Of course! I am a fruit tree of knowledge- both historical and paranatural! I am here for your picking!"

Max cleared his throat. "Well, one, I'm going to need you to never say that to anyone, ever again, that was really weird."

"Oh."

"Two," He glanced away. "Have you forgiven Isaac for what he did?"

Spender didn't move for a moment, and then he sighed.

Max watched him out of the corner of his eye as he slumped over to his desk, hoisting himself up onto it and plopping down with a heavy body, and maybe a heavy heart. Spender was the only one who would talk to him, for real, about Isaac, the only one who would openly discuss efforts to find him, to bring him home, and it was for that reason Max wished desperately he could tell him Isaac wasn't in the city anymore, that he was looking in the wrong place. But he couldn't, not unless he wanted to cause trouble with Doorman and stab Isaac in the back while he was at it. He let himself look at Spender then, and see the man slumped over, elbows on his knees. He raised his head and smiled at Max, and even though he looked defeated, it was some comfort. "I knew Isaac would come around, I never had any doubt. Isaac is…" He ran a hand through his hair, which looked a little more unruly than usual. "Isaac is confused, but he's a good person at heart."

Max nodded silently; he didn't need to voice his agreement for Spender to know he felt the same.

Spender exhaled, and his voice dropped low. "I just hope that he's okay, wherever he is."

* * *

"- and I literally blew up the target!" Isabel ran a finger under her nose, beaming at the impressed, awed look on Dimitri's face. It was a rare sight to see; after all, Dimitri wasn't one to be surprised by much of anything. He always had an ongoing game of chess going on somewhere in the back of his mind, was constantly thinking and predicting and acting a certain way, so the rise of his brows and the smile sneaking up on him was especially gratifying for her to set her eyes on.

"Nice! Man, I used to be able to hold my own against you, but I'm not so sure I could now.."

She laughed and raised one hand, smacking Dimitri in the back harder than normal, but enough that she knew he could take it. He wasn't a wimp, never had been. "Hah, it would be interesting to see how rusty you are. Maybe we should test this theory?"

His smile turned sly. "I still bet you can't pin me."

"I bet you I could."

He snorted, and their arms brushed together. He was leaning into her, and she leaned back, but he just as quickly pulled away. She would have done the same, but he spoke, and his voice was deeper than usual, and slower, though it rang just as cool to the ear. "You're right, we should certainly test this hypothesis… say, after school tomorrow?"

She grinned. It'd been awhile since she'd had company over at the dojo, which had become glaringly apparent to her after Ed packed his bags and hauled them over to Master Hashimoto's. She supposed she'd never really had much of a need for other friends, not with him around, not when she had a practically built-in friend at her hip in school and right next door at home. She wondered, against her better judgement, whether or not Ed felt the same, if he missed her like that… if he'd already made some friends at the new dojo.

With a shake of her head, she straightened up, nose in the air. "I'd say that sounds like a fine time for a duel!"

"Great!" He took a few steps ahead of her "It's a date, then."

And that was where he cheeks decided, spontaneously, to combust and/or become cherries, she didn't care which. She couldn't see his face from the angle she was at, and even so, her heart gave her one heavy, forceful pound- or leap, she wasn't sure. It hadn't done that before. All because of the word "date"? Really? She shrugged it off and took a slow jog to catch up with him.

* * *

The sink was full of red, full of blood- his blood.

Isaac grinded his teeth and pressed his tongue as firmly as he could to the roof of his mouth as he pulled the bandages he'd earlier stolen from the walk-in clinic dumpster from his arm, hissing as he pulled each agonizing inch off of his skin. Every fiber of his being wanted him to huff, to whimper, to slam his head against the wall to ease the pain, but he couldn't. His eye had hurt, but it hadn't been deep; he took care of it by tossing water at it for a good minute, and though it still stung, it wasn't nearly as bad as the gash in his lower stomach.

He let out a gruff, feral grunt as he pulled the last of the bandage from his arm, lifting his shirt up for the first time since he'd cleaned the wound to put some pressure on it.

It hadn't stopped bleeding.

He exhaled and bent over the sink, glaring down at the stained drain with such disbelief in himself and his situation it was hard for him to even fathom that he was bleeding out in a gas station bathroom. Bandaging his wound would not be enough to take care of it- he had to do something else.

He pulled his head up to look at himself in the mirror, trying not to stare too long at the dark circles under his eyes or the pale, dead blue that used to be bright like his thunder. He eyed the toilet, then turned around to look at more than its reflection.

The handle on the side was old, and rusty, and tilted to the side when it should have been sturdy and straight, jutting out of the side. He had a feeling it wouldn't work if he tried to flush the toilet, looking at the handle the way it was, but it might have been some other use for him. It was, after all, the perfect length. _Isaac, are you sure you want to do this? It's unsanitary. It's disgusting._ He sighed.

It was the only choice he had.

Well, if he was really going to do this, he needed a few things. Isaac glanced at his hoodie, which he'd discarded to the floor after he cleared it of the blood that'd soaked through his shirt; it wouldn't have done him any good to walk around in a bloody jacket all the time- his shirt could get as covered as possible, it meant nothing, but the hoodie would catch attention. Careful not to disturb his abdomen any more than need be, he reached down and tugged it back on.

* * *

"I'm telling you, I can't handle so many students at once!" Spender gestured around the empty blackness that was his room, BL floating above him the way she always did, legs crossed like she wasn't placing the world on his shoulders- his world. He didn't usually lose his cool with her, in headquarters, but what she was suggesting was far too much to ask of him, far too much to ask of anyone. "I'd have to hold classes in the auditorium! I- I can't keep up with all the homework! All the tests!"

BL sighed, setting her chin on the back of her fingers, elbow on her thigh. "I wish I could tell you there was another way, Rick, but…" She looked at him, or he thought she did. "Perhaps Doctor Zarei will be willing to take some of those students off of your hands?"

"With all due respect, that's not the point!" He deflated, but he wasn't out of steam just yet. The entire situation was a mess, a complete and utter garbage dump of a mess, and it was too much for him to clean up on his own. "Couldn't we just get rid of their trauma? I am well aware there are more than a few agents with the ability to" he motioned flatly "make all of this go away."

"Are you suggesting we" she closed in on him fast, her bandaged, expressionless face within centimeters of his own "wipe their memories?"

Perhaps he'd spoken out of turn. He swallowed hard, fingers twitching at his sides as he did his best to not look away, because looking away meant backing down, and at this point he'd come too far. "...Yes."

BL watched him, examining him, and he felt like a small child, fresh and scared of the paranatural world, for the first time in a very long time. Then she pulled back.

"Hmm," her fingers tapped at her chin, and she might have been looking up at the void around them and not down at him "You raise an interesting point! Er, I mean, we can't… we can't do that… but interesting point!"

He sighed in relief, then realized he'd been denied and shook his head "Wait! Why not? If we could truly wipe their minds and reverse the effects on them-!"

"Agent Day needs those minds. Not to mention the ethical and moral concerns we would have…" She waved a hand "Either way, I don't think the Cousinhood weirdos would take too kindly to essentially wiping the slate clean before they had a chance to investigate themselves" She sighed "... though I'm doing my best to fend them off. I'm afraid that's all in Agent Day's hands, now."

"She's already interviewed everyone there is to interview!"

"And what if they just so happen to remember something else?" BL shook her head. "It's best for everyone if we negotiate with your principal and find a way to integrate paranatural lessons into the general curriculum. It'll be fun!" She clasped her hands together, visibly bouncing in the air. "It'll be like we have our very own Spectral Academy! Hoo hoo!"

He ran an exasperated hand through his hair, slicking the already-perfectly-groomed strands back. "And what will we do about their parents? Their families! They could- as it is they could already be spreading sensitive information to the outside world!"

"As much as I don't like it, we'll have to resort to" Her face split open, revealing teeth and the ever-so-watchful eye sitting between both sets "scare tactics!" Her face bandaged together again, and she continued unpertured. "We'll have to tell them the truth! Tell them what will happen to their children, and to their faithful mentors," she gave him a pointed look "if words gets out about their abilities" Experiments. Interrogations.

An all-out war between spectrals and non-spectrals.

Spender exhaled; he'd lost this fight, but maybe not the war. "There's still the issue of student-to-teacher ratio. Even with Zarei's help, we'd still be drastically outnumbered! It isn't even just the students we're dealing with here- we'd have my own peers in these classes. Those numbers are just too high!"

"And for the moment you'll have to deal with them, I'm afraid. We'll find agents to help you, I promise. All it will take is some time-"

"I don't have time!" He knew he was yelling, that she was his authoritative figure no matter how long they'd known each other, and he was out of line and disrespectful, but he was truly at his wit's end. "Isaac is still missing, my club and I have searched the entirety of Mayview, and the threat of the monsters returning places Isaac's disappearance in a very, very concerning place! Time is the one thing I don't have!"

BL watched him, silently, motionlessly, for a moment, and usually the realization, the reality of his outburst might have hit him, but all of his body was so wired, so filled with energy and fear that had no place to go, that he didn't care. Her body language slackened, her shoulders fell, and she sighed.

"While I… regret the situation with Isaac O'Connor, and I am deeply worried for him," her nonexistent eyes met his "this situation is more important, and it needs to be your highest priority" He deflated again, limbs going slack, and he was surprised he was still standing on his wobbling knees "I have other agents working to find the monsters. We haven't heard back from them yet, but we will. For the moment, I need you to focus on your day job."

"But-!"

"Richard."

His words died in his throat, and the way she was looking at him, how calm she was, told him that there was no room for dispute, no matter how he felt, no matter what he did or said to convince her to see his way of things.

They both fell silent, and his fists clenched.

* * *

He awoke with a start.

His hair was slick with sweat, and his glasses wouldn't stay on, no matter how many times he raised his trembling hands to keep them in place. He shivered; the room seemed colder than it had been when he first laid down. He stared down at his lap, hot hands running along freezing skin, even though it felt equally as warm to the touch.

"Richard." He raised his head. Lucifer peered at him from his reflection in the mirror, wings looking tight. "Are you all right?"

"... Yes."

Lucifer clicked his tongue. "Liar" though he sounded gruel, his face seemed soft, calm, kind.

Spender dug his head into his hands.

* * *

There was only one worker on duty. Isaac pulled the hood over his head, over his eye- over his face. That would make his job easier. All he had to do was hope no family on a road trip wandered into that particular gas station to make a beeline for the restroom; he'd been the only customer in there in the last hour, the mess of blood would definitely get him in a hospital at best, handcuffs as worst.

The employee was playing some crossword, presumably not allowed to use her phone during hours. She looked bored, occasionally fixing her ponytail even when there wasn't a problem with it. She popped the gum in her mouth, then sucked it back in and continued chewing, tilting her head to the side, hoop earrings swaying with the motion. The phone rang, and her brown eyes widened. She all but leaped at the line, picking it up, answering "Yes, this is Gas-Your-Way! How may I help you?" with the best cutesy customer service voice he'd heard in maybe ever. That was good. She was distracted.

Isaac made his way over to the front as she went to answer the phone, nabbing one butane lighter from the rack just below the register before sliding to the back where the probably-wildly-unhealthy gas station foods sat- coffee, slurpies, candy bars, hot dogs and other meats on a rolling grill, but his eyes fell upon the napkins stacked together by the tops and straws and condiments. He ripped a few away, enough to feel like he was holding an oven mitt, and sped his way back to the bathroom.

He locked the door behind him, walking to the toilet, setting the lid down, and plopping down atop it. It was flimsy as heck, and he was one-hundred percent sure it wouldn't break beneath his weight. He took his hoodie off, then discarded himself of his shirt. Yes, the floor of the bathroom was disgusting and covered in unidentifiable liquids, but at this point he'd already been through worse. With the stack of napkins in one hand, he placed the broken toilet lever, holding onto only one side of it. The other, he snapped open the butane lighter, using his thumb to ignite a small flame. _Here we go._

He held the toilet lever over the flame, watching the metal heat.

It took some time, time he couldn't account for (could have been ten minutes, could have been fifteen, or maybe even thirty or an hour), but the metal finally glew red, bright, and so very hot. Isaac inhaled. He had no room for doubts. Without a second though, he pressed the metal to his open wound and held it there.

He screamed. It had been a month and more since he'd last thrown his head back like this, grinded his teeth and fought back a flood of tears like this, and the pain had never been physical. It was excrutiating, hot, heavy, bright, furious pain. It was a million times worse than the wound in his abdomen, a billion times worse than the pain in his eye, and it spread through him like wildfire. It was as though every inch of him was being burned alive by scorching metal, by fire, by blue, deathly pain. He screamed some more, and when he was out of breath those screams died and became whimpers, tiny sounds that had him bending over, shoulders shaking. He would not cry. He would not cry.

There was a knock at the door, and it might have startled him had he not been heaving.

"Sir? I'm sorry, are you okay?"

He tried to open his mouth, but it was dry. The employee paused on the other side of the door, but he could feel her anxiety from there.

"O-okay! I'm gonna go call 911! Please just sit tight, okay? Help will be here soon!" He heard her patting around in her pockets, then a muffled curse as her footsteps, hurried, drifted away.

Quickly picking up his shirt and his hoodie, Isaac unlatched the lock and pushed the bathroom door open just a smidge. The Employees Only door was shutting just before his eyes, and he took that as his cue to carry his weight out the door before she came back. He took one last glance at the blood-soaked bathroom, mumbled an apology- to who, he wasn't even sure- and took his exit out the front door of the gas station.


	4. Chapter 4

He was early, he thought, glancing down at his watch- early by a day. Ed snickered to himself and climbed the steps up the Guerra dojo, stuffing his hands in the pockets of his jacket. Isabel was never a fan of surprises, but he had a feeling this would be different- after all, it'd been a little over two weeks since he'd last seen her, last saw her smile and felt her nearly lift him off his feet. He was growing stronger, gaining muscle and therefore weight, and she wouldn't be able to do that past the the next season, but for the moment he'd enjoy it. She probably wouldn't be too proud to be lifted off of her feet, but he'd certainly try to repay the favor.

It was silently that he pressed his palms against the door and inched it open. There were a few grunts, and the sounds of bodies hitting the floor along with the occasional yelp- telltale signs of a sparring match. He pressed further in, peeking inside with a grin.

Isabel and Dimitri moved back and forth, throwing punches and kicks and dodging each blow all the same as they bent forward and backward in a limbo, in a dance. Isabel winced when Dimitri's hand came too close to her head, brushing by the tip of her ear as she sidestepped and brought her forearms up to block a surprise blow to her chest. Dimitri seemed less distressed than she was, but Ed could see the bead of sweat rolling down the side of his head. He plopped down on crossed legs by the doorway, setting patient hands in his lap as he watched them duke it out. It'd been a year or so since he'd last seen the Activity Club's strongest have at it- a treat he was beginning to realize he'd sorely missed.

Isabel's sidestep left Dimitri falling forward with the force of his fist, and she took the opportunity to throw her arms around his waist and dig her head into his stomach, sending both of them falling to the ground. She'd been set on cornering him, then, too distracted to notice the way Dimitri tangled their legs on the way down, use the twist of his heel to change their momentum. She squeaked as she landed back-first on the floor, Dimitri pinning her with his hands locking her by the elbows to the floor. She squinted at him from behind the one eye that wasn't covered in her unruly bangs, and he smirked at her the way Dimitri smirked at everybody, but with a blood-boiling hint of smugness in the glint of his eye. He leaned down, close enough that his nose was hardly an inch from her own, and whispered. "You've gotten stronger, Iz, but not strong enough."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

He wasn't expecting her legs to wrap around his upper body, or for her to use that surprise to flip him over her head. He exhaled, sharply, and grunted as she flipped over on top of him, knee pressing against his stomach, hands curled around his shirt, tugging him up as she leaned down. She gave him her own haughty grin. She didn't realize her breathing was labored until she spoke, or that Dimitri's lungs were just as constricted. "Is that strong enough for you?" He took a moment to process how she'd won, or more accurately that he hadn't, then snorted and smiled, lips, which her eyes- for some weird reason- fell to without her explicit permission, parting to say something.

And then there was a whistle.

They turned to look so fast they might have made themselves dizzy, eyes falling to their secret audience, who was then standing and clapping with a smile as wide as his face. "That was so cool, Izzy! Man, where'd you learn that? No way the old man has started teaching you judo."

Dimitri blinked, and in the next moment he'd been dropped to the floor, suddenly much lighter without the weight of a second person towering over him. "Ed!" He sat up with one hand rubbing his head, eyebrow rising as Isabel rushed into Ed's arms, wrapping her own around his neck as he took advantage, digging his head into the volume of her hair, of her neck, with a face so bright he'd have thought he was a man home from war. Isabel was no less buoyant than the enduring wife, laughing and swinging herself around and squeezing him closer every time Ed so much as made a move to pull away. Dimitri frowned.

Then he shook his head and smiled, and raised a hand. "Ed! Long time no see, my man."

The two finally pulled away from their embrace, and Ed waved back with a grin and a flick of his wrist.

Isabel's eyes met Dimitri's, wide and- good lord, glowing. "We were just sparring, since our resident AWOL club member is a little rusty." She stuck her hands on her hips, and he snorted to the side, gazing at her in his peripheral.

"I must be if I let you pull what you just did…"

Her smile doubled in size, and he could have sworn the shimmer in her eyes diminished to a dull brown, sharp, like a predator, like an animal. Isabel turned and nudged Ed with the bend of her arm, playfully. "What do ya say? Wanna face the winner?"

He and Ed locked eyes, and for a second, just a second, there was a question hanging in the air- something unspoken, something he wasn't even sure Ed knew himself to be asking. Dimitri shrugged and leaned forward over his knee, and from there, Ed sprung to life again. "I'm as ready as a lunatic preparing for the apocalypse!"

* * *

"What do you mean you haven't found anything? You're the police! He's a missing rich kid! What could possibly be higher on your priority list, woman?"

Suzy, Collin knew, was a fierce girl, and would become all the more tiger-like as the years passed them by, and he thought for sure that, given time… she'd get herself brutally murdered, or locked in a high-security prison. He'd just hoped, prayed, wished on several wishing wells and multitudes of tossed coins in fountains, that he would not be present, nor an accomplice when that day came.

The woman, the small, bony, wide-eyed woman, no younger than fifty, trembled in the presence of Suzy's wrath, fingers shaking so terribly that she couldn't even type a word, although Suzy had echoed the command like a mantra: _Look up Isaac O'Connor. Has the case been solved? Any traces?_

He wasn't about to tell her they probably wouldn't share that sensitive information with a couple of middle school kids, and he doubted the poor thing she was terrorizing would. "I-I'm afraid we h-haven't found anything new, yet-"

"Are you serious right now?" Suzy pointed to the keyboard with one rigid finger, teeth grinding as each word fell from the wall of bone with a hiss. "Look. Again."

"I-I'm sorry, miss! There's simply nothing else to be done! Our men a-are working very hard to find your friend! I-I'm sure he'll-" She squeaked when Suzy's fist came down upon the desk, shuffling and unsettling stacks of papers, sending white sheets flying and swaying in the dead air of the police station. She wrenched her back against her desk chair until it hit the other side of her circular desk, wincing the more Suzy leaned closer.

"I don't want excuses, Margaret! I want results!"

Collin sighed and pulled away from the front revolving door where he'd been standing; the red of Suzy's cheeks meant trouble was brewing, and he didn't want to be around to hear the tea kettle sound. "Suzy," he set one hand on her shoulder, pulling her an inch or two off of the front desk, which she was near laying across by that point. "You need to calm down."

"Calm down?" He winced, unprepared for the level of "shrill" in the height of her tone. "How can I calm down?" She raised one hand, gesturing to the frail woman behind the desk, who'd taken the opportunity to step away- presumably to get help. "How can I calm down? These nicompoops can't find one blue-eyed ginger kid, and I'm the one out of line?"

"Yes! Now come" he tugged at her arm "on!"

Her feet skidded against the floor, and though she waved around and pulled back and dug her heels into the floor, he somehow managed to wrench his arms enough to get her out the front door, down the front stoop. She tried to snatch her wrist away as soon her her toes tipped into the final step, and he let her. "What" she huffed, and he wondered, sardonically, if she'd tired even her lungs out with all the screaming she'd just done. He felt a deep, connected sympathy for the poor child she'd presumably have one day, then cringed and swept away the thought of _Suzy as a mother_ immediately. "What did you do that for?"

"You are literally going to get yourself arrested."

"For what? Complaining?"

"No! For being a public disturbance! In a police station!" He gestured to the still-swinging doors and the mess she'd left on the other side of them. "That's like going to a train convention before proceeding to mock trains as the inferior public transit system!"

Suzy blinked at him, then glanced to the station doors, then back at him, and crossed her arms. "So?"

"So?" Collin bit down on his lip so hard he was sure it was going to start bleeding, swallowing the complete and utter disbelief and resentment that was starting to swell within him at a more alarming rate- and higher volume- than usual.

But blowing up and ranting at her about the poor ethics of the life she led was going to do nothing but get him drowned out like always. He had to be smarter about this- had to be more like _Dimitri_ about this.

He ran both his hands down his face and sighed into them. "Suzy, look," he pressed his palms together and placed them at his chest, mildly surprised when she looked at him instead of through him, blue eyes narrowed, but for once, focused. "I miss Isaac, too. I'm worried about him. There are a lot of things that can happen to a missing kid our age out there and few of them are good- but listen to me. There's gotta be a better way of going about this."

Suzy's nose wriggled and she pouted up at him from when her downturned chin was set, looking like a scolded child as she wrung her fingers through the sleeves of her pink jacket. He would have been more in awe if he wasn't so worried he'd lose her attention; there was something tamed about Suzy when she was quiet, when she was thinking and not scheming, and the serenity made her something to observe, like the return of the ocean after a tsunami, or the white flag on a battlefield as either army slept through the night. He couldn't help but think that he should have taken a page out of Dimitri's book a long time ago. She huffed. "Like what?"

She'd listened to him. She'd really listened! "I'm not sure, but maybe Mister Spender will have some ideas?"

Suzy sprung back to life then, tamer than before, but still fiery and still spoiled. "I don't wanna ask him for help!"

Collin blinked, hands falling to his sides. Of all the-? "What? Why not?"

Her cheeks bloomed red, and she stomped her foot on the sidewalk for good measure, hands balling into fists. "I just don't want to, all right!" She passed him by, then, each step as heavy as the irritation radiating off of her, almost like the auras Isaac had once described, and he watched her with a curl in his lip and furrow in his brow.

* * *

She must have been six, maybe five, and Catriona wondered how she was already seeing spirits- how she already felt comfortable enough around them to be playing with them so carelessly, so freely. She could hear the girl's mother somewhere, in the distance, like a bird chirping completely unaware of the woodsman coming to chop down its tree.

She placed a hand against the tree she took as cover, watching the child from the shadows as the spirit led her to and fro, from one end of the small stone bridge to the other. It was small, small enough to fit into the palm of her tiny hand, and fast, and it flew, in all probability the factor that drew the little girl to chase. It was cute, Catriona supposed, with a bushy tail like a squirrel and paws tinier than the smallest leaf, pure white with a stroke a red along its head to its hind end. Its ears twitched when the girl giggled, beady red eyes blinking back at her because it had no mouth to chirp back.

Catriona was sure it meant no harm.

Meant.

Perhaps it was a misstep, or the culprit was the sleekness of the stone after it'd rained in the early morning.

She slipped. She slipped and stumbled into the running river below, into the heavy crash of wave after wave as her small arms reached helplessly above the raging waters. Her mother drew closer, then. _Probably heard the splash._

"Aggie!" Her mother was, understandably, panicked, eyes wide, hands shaking, screaming and reaching a powerless hand out to the wandering, blind fingers of her child. Catriona grimaced, licking her lip and cracking her knuckles.

"Love, I'm going in."

Though she heard no response, she could feel his approval- warmth, then something hotter, a passion, a drive.

The little girl, Aggie, floated down the river, out of sight of her mother, who'd only just begun climbing off her knees to chase her down the forestside. She called out to her all the while, heart racing, pounding like the veins in her chest were ready to pop, a hand outstretched in fear, in so much fear. She could only see the tips of her baby's tallest fingers, overarching the water only enough to draw the attention of the only audience she had. "Aggie! Aggie, hold on! Hold on, baby!"

"It's okay!" She paused, nearly tripping over her own two feet as a black-gloved hand raised in the air behind the bend of the river and trees, fingers beckoning her closer. "Aggie, right? I caught her, she's fine!"

Lo and behold, just around the corner, she found a woman with hair the color of an orange sky- the sunset- holding a soaking wet Aggie in her oddly-covered arms. But that was her least concern, not when her baby was reaching out to her with tears in her eyes, fingers opening and closing with every inch she reached for her mother's embrace. With a gasp, with a choked sigh, with a smile, she took her daughter in her arms and swung her around in a circle, holding her close, taking in breaths of her damp hair and laughing to herself as tiny hands clasped at her blouse. She turned to the stranger, her hero, hero daughter's savior, and took in her odd state of dress with less scrutiny and more curiosity.

Her dress was long and formal and black, as though she'd stepped fresh out of a church, out of a money man's funeral, though the lengthy slits on either side of her long, slim legs gave that thought pause. The woman smiled and straightened out her dress, shifting the shoulders so the straps of her off-shoulder neckline fell, well, off the shoulder and not on, giving her a smile as she set her hands at her hips. "My, my, little one, your mommy should be more careful with such an adventerous soul like yourself."

"I'm so sorry!"

The stranger raised both hands defensively, eyes wide and lips curved. "Oh, dear, no, I'm not scolding you! No need to apologize! I was the same way, myself, when I was her age. My mother had quite the handful to deal with."

She sighed and offered the stranger her hand, surprised when she took it to feel nothing but warmth. How were her hands not wet? Come to think of it, she looked untouched by even the wind, let alone water or the dirt of the forest floor. Odd... "My name is Mari. This is Aggie. I was- I was so busy watering Mister Carver's yard, you see, I'm a gardener, that I hardly noticed there was a river nearby and-!"

"You take your daughter to work with you? Well," the stranger leaned forward and pressed a finger to Aggie's nose, who giggled. "That seems an odd practice for a woman in this day-and-age. Does your boss know about this?"

"No! But I've been trying to find a proper daycare, I really have! It's just that everyone is full, and babysitters are so expensive in this neighborhood-!"

"Lucky I've run into you, then!" The woman reached out of her pocket- _that dress had pockets?_ \- and held it out for her to take. "You see, I've just started my own daycare service, and I'm yet to find any children to, er, look after. Now that you mention it, it must be because they're all already in established daycare communities." She clicked her tongue on the roof of her mouth and smiled. "My name's Catriona. I'd say you and I need each other!"

Mari had only just finished typing her home phone number into the stranger's- Catriona's- contacts before she all but shoved the phone into her hands. "Yes! Please! Thank you so much! Give me a call at 8:30 when I get off and we'll set our schedules out, okay?"

Mari and Aggie disappeared over the hill from which they'd came, and for a moment, Catriona felt deeply satisfied. She ran one hand over her arm and sighed. "My only regret is that you and I could never bear a child."

She could feel him, his essence, enclose around her, then, drag her into his realm with all his stars and lights and the empty black sky. There was something so reassuring about his world, something so welcoming, though his space mirrored nothing but the emptiness of the night sky and the land above the clouds. "I know, my love." He set a hand on her shoulder, and effortlessly, she fell back against his chest, placing one hand over his own. "Though, perhaps now, we could have a family." She glanced over her shoulder to find him looking back at her. They smiled as she laced their fingers together.

* * *

"Max! My boy! You're just who we're looking for!"

Max squeaked and jumped three feet in the air, clutching the family album he held squarely against his chest. Dad peeked around the corner of the kitchen, and though Zoey didn't go to poke her head out, too, he had a feeling she was in the other room, making popcorn; she had to, otherwise it'd be left up to their dad, who had a bad habit of decking each bowl in so much black pepper and salt (and sugar?), it became inedible for anybody but himself. Max had the sneaking suspicion he planned it that way. "What? Why?"

"We're going to get a round of D&D in! You up for a fight against an ogre? Now mind you this is very different from the ogre from the last game! This one is the king of resentment, the last one was the king of righteous unfounded anger."

Max sighed. He got enough monster-fighting a month ago, and if he never saw another monster for as long as he lived, until he died and started roaming the world as a ghost (because he would unarguably stick around just to do sick scooter tricks in the afterlife), it would be too soon.

Besides, there was something he wanted to do…

"Sorry, dad. Maybe another night."

His dad might have called after him again, he'd been clingy like that lately, but he stuck to pretending he hadn't heard him over the slam of his door. He padded, slowly, over to his bed and climbed atop, resting his back against the headboard as he flittered the front pages of their family album open.

 _I just need to think for a little while._

He stopped on the latest pictures of his mom, pictures around maybe a year, maybe a month, before… He exhaled through his nose and smiled to himself, thumb running over her face as she tried to pick out a slice of cake in the heated window of a Baxborough bakery in the upper city. He always told himself, that if he could do it again, if he could go back and say things he hadn't said, or take back things he had- Max grimaced.

And yet, there he was, thinking the same thing again. He hadn't learned anything the first time around, and now…

He ran his thumb over her picture again, wondering if he'd get it right a third time.

* * *

Isaac could only take a gasp of air before he was lurching over the toilet of another state park bathroom, hands clenching the side of the bowl like safety bars on a rollercoaster. His stomach clenched and he was throwing up all over again. His hands were clammy, and his entire body was sweaty, hot, leaving the bandages on his body clinging to him like a second skin.

His stomach wavered, and for a moment he thought his body was calming, that he could finally take a moment to breath.. And then he tasted bile in his throat and his face was once again uncomfortably close to the toilet bowl.

It took another fifteen minutes for the vomiting to stop, and another five for him to clean up. He left the bathroom with his hands in his pockets, feet swaying from side to side, but he could still walk… a little.

Why was he sick? He'd thought he'd taken all of the necessary precautions to keep his wounds uninfected, keep his body healing- what had he missed? As far as he could tell, the wound in his arm was scabbing over, as was his eye (though it still stung like a fresh wound when he cleaned his face), and he'd cauterized the wound in his abdomen without it opening up on him. That was all he had to do, right? He frowned. The lever had been rusty… had he given himself tetanus? He'd had all of his shots?

He winced as his stomach once again became unsettled, raising one hand to set it against the churning skin. Not good. He was starting to get dizzy. He winced and watched the park move on around him, trying to clear his eyes. He could make out a dog catching a frisbee in the top of his mouth, hear the proud owner egging and cheering him on to bring it back to her "like a good boy". He could make out a couple- he thought, were they holding hands? Locking arms? Oh no, the world was starting to spin.

Isaac paused and tried to steady himself, closing his eyes and clutching the fabric of his jacket.

He could hear children laughing, hear people jogging by and the loud music pounding out of their earphones. There were girls giggling, gossiping, and some old woman talking to the birds she was feeding. And then- police sirens?

Isaac inhaled, sharply, hand twisting into a fist at his stomach, teeth grinding together as his aura grew to tower over him.

Then it was okay. The police cars were only passing by, only chasing down a speeding driver. He was fine. His world was fine. He didn't notice the woman walking by, didn't notice her notice him.

He shook his head slowly, to clear it, and took one step forward, then another shaking one, and another, and before he knew it, he was walking to the exit. His aura died down, came to sit right above his shoulders. He didn't think it'd left him very often in the month he'd been away from Mayview. There was always danger, always something to keep a lookout for. Sometimes it was monsters, surprisingly enough, sometimes it was the spirits he was looking to spend the rest of his time undoing the evil of, and sometimes it was other people.

He took another step forward, and for a moment his vision gave out, blacked out, left him blind and unsure. He squinted and blinked, but he couldn't move his head freely. When his vision returned, and the world around him came into clearer view, he saw why- he was face-down on the ground, knees freshly skinned from the brush with the sidewalk, palms of his hands itching and red and stinging. He took a moment to reorient himself, and by the time he did that, he had an audience.

Isaac tried to shoot up, tried to push himself off the ground at the first site of unfamiliar shoes as his feet, but his arms had lost all strength, and he found his mouth full of splintered, cracked concrete in the next moment.

The people around him started whispering, some asking if he was okay, others asking what happened because they hadn't seen it but they'd noticed the crowd- _crowd_ , crap.

 _You've got to get up, Isaac. You have to! You've come so far, it can't end like this!_

He took a deep breath and pressed his palms to the sidewalk again, willing his arms to work- work, please, just for a moment- and still, he fell back to the ground, cheek scraping against the ground. That meant his hoodie had fallen down, which meant-?

"Oh my god! Oh my god, is that that missing boy?"

Isaac grinded his teeth and gathered the strength he didn't have, using the tops of his feet to push him forward and not his hands to pull him up. Instead, he skidded forward before he could push himself up, and when he was on his legs again, he shoved past the crowd that'd surrounded him, giving every hand that reached to grab him a small shock, incentive to keep away. No bigger than static. He bolted for the woods, pulling the hoodie back over his head and tightening it by the strings.

"Hey, wait!"

A woman's voice trailed after him, no different than the rest, so he sucked in his grinding stomach and pressed onward.

He didn't see a woman reach out after him, see her stumbled up to the woods and pause, or her wide eyes as she followed the trail of blood he had no idea he was leaving behind, or see her steel herself and straighten up, hands clenched at her sides.

* * *

The next one was a teenager- younger than the first, maybe fourteen or fifteen. He was alone, on a street corner in the wealthy, artsy area of the town, performing the act of a mime for free, save for the tip jar he'd set clearly to the side. She approached him silently, head tilted, folding her arms over her chest. He'd noticed her, and in an instant he went from pulling an invisible rope to forming an square- a box- around himself, went to work pounding against the fake wall soundlessly. His legs slid below him, and he began raising his hands above his head as though the ceiling was- ah, she nodded- the box was closing in.

"Do you really feel that box of yours?" He blinked at her, and she shrugged. "Unless, of course, that's a trade secret?"

He frowned and, rather than forgetting the box he'd "formed" around himself, he pressed open the top and climbed out of it. It was all very impressive to see, especially for a boy so young. He stood up straight, and fixed her with a glare as he crossed his arms over his chest. "A mime isn't supposed to talk you know?"

She laughed, waving an apologetic hand. "I know, I'm sorry about that. I just, well, I couldn't help but notice that you're performing for people who… aren't really there?"

He sucked in his cheek and glanced away. "So? Somebody could be watching me from their cozy little apartment, right?"

"I have a feeling that isn't who you're performing for."

He sighed and glanced around, like he was looking for art critics to pop out of nowhere and accuse him of ruining the name of the good ol' mime. When he looked back at her, his lips were in a thin line. "Look, lady, what do you want? I could be ruining my whole career by talking to you in costume!"

"I don't want anything, dear, I just want to talk!" She offered him her hand. "My name is Catriona. I think I know who you're performing for. Tell me, have you had any near-death experiences, dear?"

* * *

Isabel was all smiles as she waved Ed and Dimitri off in the evening, which was great because an all-smiles-Isabel was Ed's favorite Isabel. Even as they came to the front of the tunnel leading to the rest of the city, they could still turn around and see her standing on the front porch of the dojo, waving whenever they'd take a moment to glance back. Ed and Dimitri laughed together and gave her another wave; this time, she laughed too and went back inside.

"I'm glad I got to see Izzy again" Ed had a habit of mumbling to himself these days, the habit of a boy often scolded for his volume, he guessed- he hadn't expected Dimitri to hear him.

"Ed."

"Yeah?"

Dimitri came to a halt, and a few steps later so did Ed. Something had changed in the air, subtly, quietly, but Ed had become more familiar with the world around him, more familiar with the way his lungs seemed to grow heavy-or his heart- in preparation. Why? Well, that was anyone's guess. Dimitri always had a lot on his mind, was always thinking, always considering. Ed stood still and waited patiently, while Dimitri stood even stiller aside from the motion of sticking his hands in his pockets. His head was down, and still, he was looking up at him. "You and Iz are still friends, right?"

"Wh- yes! Of course we are! Best friends! Why? Wh-was it not obvious?"

Dimitri shrugged, eyes falling to the side. "No man, it's just… it seems like you kinda want more?"

Oh no. No. Not this again. Not from him- not from the _Master Observer_ of their entire dang club! Ed screamed and tossed his head back, hands pulling and tugging at his hair. "Not you too! We're just friends! I don't like Izzy! Why does everybody keep saying that?"

"I don't know, man" Dimitri usually started to grin there, and for a faint moment he did, and it faded into the same thin line with a downward twitch. " 'ts just the way you look at her."

Ed balled his fists at his sides, face heated enough that he hardly felt the cold air of fall, and he was sure that heat reflected on the red of his cheeks. "Well I don't like Izzy and I wish everyone would stop" he kicked the dirt "implying I did!"

Dimitri sighed. "Whatever man," he began walking again, moving past Ed, carrying on down the road where they'd separate- Dimitri would return to one half of Mayview, and he would return to the other. Ed exhaled through his teeth and followed. "I just thought you should know…"

He blinked. "Huh?"

"If you do like her," Dimitri paused again, but he had no intention of looking back "you've got competition."

Ed's hands became dead weight, falling limply on either side of his legs, jaw just as loose.


	5. Chapter 5

It was lucky, especially for somebody as extraordinarily unlucky as him, to find a small quaint home deep inside the forest on the outskirts of the park. Even luckier, it was abandoned- had been for some time, from the looks of it. Dust littered the bookshelves in the family room that greeted Isaac when he stepped- stumbled, fell maybe- through the front door with the broken lock. The wooden floors were darker than they might have been had they been mopped, and he could see dust bunnies peeking out from under the leather brown couch that sat before the cobweb-filled fireplace. He might have thought the cabin was a relic of the olden prairie days, but there was a radio sitting atop the coffee table, and when he'd fumbled his way into the kitchen in search of a bathroom, he'd found a microwave and electric stove. No TV, but he wasn't going to ponder on that for too long.

Once he'd located the bathroom down the narrow hall that lead to the bedroom, guest room, and office, he'd fallen to his knees and huddled over the toilet, hands clutching at his stomach. He threw up again, or tried to; there was only bile, a reminder that he hadn't eaten in the last two days. He couldn't even stomach the toast he'd nabbed off of someone's finished tray- and that was before the nausea started. Isaac steadied himself on the toilet seat with one hand while he took slow, deep breaths, and tried to settle the tremble of his shoulders. His abdomen was in pain again, more than it had been since he'd cauterized it. He winced and pulled up the bottom of his jacket, cursing under his breath to find it'd opened up on him again. "Bandages. Gotta find…" He used the hand on the toilet to steady himself to stand, then used the other to lean against the bathroom counter "...bandages."

He opened the medicine cabinet, and inside only found pill bottle after pill bottle. _Hey, maybe there's something for pain relief? Not exactly what I need right now, but it's something…_ The first three bottles he pulled down, one of which was half full, was labeled "melatonin"; the other four or five bottles were labeled "risperidone", and were completely empty- not that he would have taken any without knowing exactly what "risperidone" was. He was desperate, not stupid.

With a grunt, he carried himself into the kitchen again, hoping against all hope there was another cabinet in the house that had some form of first aid. If worse came to worst, he could cauterize it again. Isaac flinched; that wasn't something he wanted to do. He opened up the first cabinet at the edge of the hallway first, then the one next to it, and found only tupperware and canned foods- which was great, but he needed medical equipment more than he needed food. He opened the next cabinet and exhaled upon seeing a couple of ace bandages sitting in unopened boxes. Those weren't the right bandages, per say, but they would certainly do. He grabbed both boxes and slid to the floor, going to work unwrapping his eye first.

* * *

It took him awhile to bandage himself up, but time had become a stranger to him; he glanced at the clock to find it was 3:14- school would have let out a few minutes ago, had he still been in Mayview. Isaac raised one hand to the kitchen counter, using it to hoist his heavy body off the murky tile floor. He winced, pressing his other hand to his abdomen, hoping to ease the sharp, burning sting as he got up. His next stop would have to be the bedroom. He needed to rest, just for a little while… Isaac squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head in a futile effort to ward away the dizziness that'd fallen over him, like a weight hanging from either of his ears, dragging him towards the floor. With a breath- shaking, breath- he carried himself down the hall, using the hand he'd pulled himself up with to lean against the rest of the way against the kitchen counter, and then the hallway wall when he came to it. He swallowed hard, noting with indifference how sore and dry his throat felt. He'd need to raid the kitchen when he woke up.

Once he'd found his way to the bedroom again, he pressed his entire body weight against the door, following it to the wall as it swung open, nearly stumbling over his own feet. He inhaled, sharply, and placed one hand on the oblong dresser that sat to the side of the bed. "Just a-" he coughed "...little farther." He paused in mid-slump, closing his eyes and hoping to steady himself for a moment. The hand he carried his weight on was starting to grow sore, and he wondered how long it must have taken him to go from one end of the house to the other. He took another step forward, hand dragging only the way, until the tips of his fingers brushed something wooden, something cold. Isaac opened his eyes and turned his head, slowly because even a normal turn would have set him into another wave of nausea and vertigo. On the dresser sat a picture frame, a photo of a woman no older than Mister Spender, her dull brown eyes the color of the frame she sat upon. She was smiling, but he knew that smile, knew how the small curl of her lip was fake. What caught his attention was her hair, the orange hue, like a brighter chestnut, not quite as vibrant as an orange, but calmer, like his own. Subconsciously, he raised a hand and wiped away the dust that'd gathered over the frame, over her face, then pulled away and carried on towards the bed.

The bed was firmer than he would have liked, but the cushion still was miles and lightyears better than a bus-stop bench or the bend of a highway bridge, and his body relaxed the moment he hit the mattress. He didn't even realize that he'd sighed, or that his muscles, which had been near constantly constricted, faltered and released. The heaviness of his eyes grew even starker, and Isaac squeezed his fingers through the sheets, as much as they smelled the mildew, and tangled them in the softness of cotton. It'd be nice to sleep in a real bed again, abandoned home or not.

His gaze fell upon the nightstand, eyes drawn to the black notebook that sat halfway open, like it'd been tossed aside in a hurry, in a panic. _Maybe a clue? This place looks pretty untouched, so maybe they left in a hurry? Couldn't pack?_ Well, if nothing else, it was reading material to fall asleep with.

Isaac took the notebook in one hand, then crawled under the covers, sighing again as his back hit the cushion and his head hit the pillows. He snapped the book open, surprised to find that most of the pages had been torn out- all of them had been torn out… but one.

 _My dearest Norman,_

 _I know you've been there for me. I know you've been trying. I just can't do this anymore._

 _You don't believe me. When I look into your eyes, when you're holding me, I can tell. I keep telling you that I'm_ _not_ _seeing things, that I can touch them, that these shadows talk to me. And you had me convinced, just like everyone else, that I was crazy, that I needed medication. That I needed help. Mom was wrong, Dad was wrong, and Norman,_ _you were wrong_ _. And I'm tired. I'm tired of taking all of these stupid meds and I'm tired of you walking on eggshells around me, like I'm going to do something stupid! Like I'll hurt myself! Like I'll hurt_ _you_ _! Do you know what it's like? Do you know how it feels to know the man you love is scared of you? To know he wonders if he'll wake up the next day because he shares a bed with you? I'm_ _not._ _crazy._ _And if you don't believe me, if none of you are going to believe me, then I'll find someone who does. I'm going home. Don't bother looking for me- and if Mom and Dad ask, pass it on._

* * *

"In other news, it's been a little over a month since eighth grader Isaac O'Connor has gone missing-"

The TV blinked, and died, like a flash, and it took Zoey a moment to realize what happened. She pouted and twisted around the couch, leveling Max with her best glare as she eyed the remote in his hand, finger noteably pressed against the big red "power" button.

"Hey! Turn it back on!"

Max scoffed and climbed over the back of the couch to plop down beside her, lidded eyes staring her down. She lunged forward, reaching for the remote, but he was older than her- and stronger, and a boy- all he had to do was place his forearm below her chin and raise the remote out of grasp of her short, stumpy hands. "Shouldn't you be watching something happy? Like a cartoon about ponies or something?"

Zoey huffed, nose scrunching. She fell back against the couch, crossing her arms over her chest. The glare stayed, though. "You don't understand!"

"What? The basic interests of a gradeschool girl who wears her hair in a side pigtail and owns literal shelves of Baxborough Girl Dolls? Sorry, guess I missed the puberty memo. Oh wait… you're too young for that still!"

"They found Isaac!"

Max's sardonic grin fell away near instantly, jaw going slack as he hurriedly pressed the power button in direction of the TV, eyes wide, hands shaking. It couldn't be. There was no way. Zoey misread something. Misheard something. Got Isaac's case mixed up with another missing kid with ginger hair and baby blue eyes- they couldn't have found him!

"At around 2:30pm today, at Centerfly Park in Michitan City, local citizens spotted what appeared to be a young boy, no older than twelve years old."

The station cut to a heavyset woman and her lanky boyfriend, who seemed just as aghast as two murder witnesses might be. The woman was shifting from side to side, tongue in cheek, shaking her head; her boyfriend had his hands and eyes on their golden retriever, scruffing the hair behind its perked ears, fingers nervous. "There 'as something wrong with him, ya know? I wasn't payin' too much attention, but Mack and I heard a" she clapped her hands together "flap, and we turn, and there's this boy on the ground, and there's this circle around him…" She sucked her cheeks and shook her head. "He got up and ran. Looked freaked out."

The camera gave a lengthy overview of the park, of the bathrooms, of the people wandering the stoned path lined by streetlights. "Locals say Isaac had a distinct wound over his right eye, and that he's wearing jeans, a blue shirt, and a white jacket. He ran somewhere in the direction the the Centerfly Park forest, but he has left a trail of blood behind, and police are currently investigating where it leads."

* * *

Spender closed the door to the principal's office behind him, then sighed. _Well, I suppose that went about as well as it possibly could have._ He turned and carried himself down the hallway, notebook full of strategies tucked under one of his arms. _We're lucky the principal herself has been witness to shades, otherwise, I'd have been met with more of a challenge… and heaven knows things are complicated enough as it is._ Now that they had the greenlight from the head of the school, they'd have to find a way to implement spectral courses into the curriculum. But before they even began doing that, they had to notify the students- and parents- that things were about to change; the issue was convincing the children who hadn't been exhibiting spectral growth, and their parents, not to rat the entire paranatural world out to spectrals. The parents of actual spectrals, like Max's father, they'd be swayed to keep their lips tight for fear of what might happen to their child if word got out- nobody wants to envision their lineage being dissected under laboratory lights and scalpels; the parents of children with no spectral abilities, well, needless to say they wouldn't have the same incentive. Spender raised a hand to readjust his glasses. How in the world would they pull this off?

* * *

"It's simple." Zarei crossed her legs under the cafe table, raising her teacup to her lips, savoring the earl grey- its smell, its taste, its color- in its entirety. Spender laughed under his breath, running a hand through his hair. "We'll just have to convince the students who aren't spectrals that they are."

"We can only keep that ruse up for so long…"

"Even so, it will buy you time."

Spender took a small bite of his vanilla cheesecake. His appetite had long since diminished, and he had a feeling he'd have little desire to box it come time to head home. It would sit in his fridge for a few days, grow even more unappetising, he'd put off throwing it out because he promised himself he'd eat it later, then eventually, inevitably, throw it out with a heavy heart because what was once a perfect slice of vanilla cheesecake had grown old (green?) and disgusting.

He set his fork down.

"Instead of changing the story for each parent depending on their child's status as a spectral, give them all the same story, and insert every child into whatever curriculum it is you're concocting with the school."

"Don't you think the other children will notice that they're not seeing auras like their peers are? Like their friends are?"

Zarei raised an eyebrow at him behind the rim of her teacup. "Convince them that their powers are coming, then."

Spender laughed, halfheartedly, and settled his chin in the palm of his hand. "So this entire plan revolves around telling a handful of middleschoolers that they're late bloomers? Children believe that scarcely."

"Perhaps. But it's something their parents will buy and reiterate."

He sighed and lifted his fork, taking small stabs at the cheesecake, toying with the frosting lining the outtermost layer. His whole body had felt heavier lately, or maybe he just felt weaker. "I suppose so…"

Zarei looked up at him again, crooked brows turning to furrow instead. Her lips pursed that way they always did when she was worried- worried about him. She set her teacup down, resting her pinkie on the table just before the bottom of the cup, deafening the clitter. "Richard." She exhaled. "It wouldn't be too much trouble for me to join you at the school- take on half the workload. I'm quite starved for something to do since my tool is out of commission, anyway. I'm more than capable, at least until we can find somebody better suited than I."

He was able to muster a smile, a genuine one, and the slightest tinge in his stomach signaled that his appetite had somewhat returned. "That would be a tremendous help. I couldn't thank you enough."

"I'm sure you'll find a way." She smirked, a twinkle in her eye, and she reached out to open her silverware, ready to start on the salad she'd ordered. "Though, I can't help but sense that there's something else the matter."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't play coy with me, you know I hate that." She took a bite of her salad, and he took a bite of his cheesecake, if only to avoid answering long enough to come up with something to say, or at least throw her off the tracks of whatever it was she was prodding him to find. He often thought archeology would have been a nice fit for her, with such a tendency to dig. "There's something else bothering you. What is it?" He winced, and her eyes drew to his torso. "Is it your chest? Is your wound bothering you again?"

"Er, no… in fact, it's pretty much cleared up by now." He gave her an awkward, half-toothy smile, then glanced at the television hanging on the wall behind her head. The rest of the televisions were displaying various sports, or even cartoons for kids less preoccupied with their food and more preoccupied with screaming for the attention of an inattentive parent. How lucky he was that he and Zarei had taken seats by the one TV displaying the local news- or maybe she'd planned it that way, somehow. At first glance, the channel was covering the weather, after all they were getting into the autumn months, now, and hotter temperatures were dwindling away just as summer was. And then the next segment began, and his heart all but dropped into the lowest, furthest confines of the most acidic parts of his stomach.

Zarei's nose twitched, and she turned around to look at the TV. "Now what could possibly be so important that you drop off mid-conversation-?"

Her eyes grew wide, and her jaw locked.

* * *

The school newspaper, funnily enough, had gotten no easier since the attack, and Suzy still hated the last words she typed up for the last article of the latest paper. She groaned and blew a raspberry, using the mouse to highlight the final paragraph in its entirety before deleting it. The part of her that'd spent hours and hours wording and rewording that paragraph screamed and threw things off the desk and cried over wasted time, but the perfectionist in her wielded a mental whip, and cracked it at the first sign of disobedience.

Suzy stretched her arms over her head and leaned back in her desk chair, watching Collin take bites of his breakfast bar, which was more a mid-afternoon snack than an actual breakfast. The sun was setting, and they should have left a good hour or two ago, but she was nothing if not stubborn, and she meant to finish that last paragraph even if it killed her. Collin looked up, eyes meeting hers, and she opened her mouth to say something, start a conversation-

Then Max came bursting through the clubroom door. "Isaac-!" He gasped then bent in on himself, hands at his knees as he began panting. Suzy leapt from her chair, and Collin all but fell backwards in his on his way up.

"What? Max, what?"

"They- they found…" he huffed, then ran right up to her, eyes darting between her and the computer. It took her a moment before she realized he was asking for permission, which she granted with a frantic nod and two steps back. Max all but jumped at the keyboard, fingers moving so rapidly, she almost felt bad she'd restricted him to camera-guy in her fantasies. Collin came to stand at his other side, and in moments, Max had the local news station website up on the club computer. Max pulled up a video, then finally said: "They found Isaac!"

The video ran, and ran until it finished, and began again until Suzy reached out to stop it.

"Is there still information coming in?"

Max shook his head "No, they lost him, but at least we know what city he's in."

"That's-!" Collin gestured around the room, eyes wide, panicked. "That's not any help if he's flipping dying!"

Max's wide eyes turned dark, and the finger he raised to point at the video was rigid. Suzy squeaked and moved out of its way. "The video didn't say he was dying. They said he was injured."

"He left a trail of blood, Max!" Collin seemed unfazed, and Suzy was almost proud to see him level such a scary face, proud that she'd rubbed off on him, probably. But her attention was, first and foremost, on the article tied to the video. She'd skimmed it over, and then skimmed it over once more, but Collin was right… "People who aren't dying don't usually do that."

Collin's voice softened at the end, and Max fell silent. Suzy, strangely enough, couldn't find a word to say, couldn't look Max's way for fear of the look on his face, the kind of worry that seeped into the bones and stayed there. Max's hand fell from the monitor, then sat limply at the side of the desk.

* * *

There was a creaking sound, and it jolted Isaac awake.

The room was dark; the sun must have fallen while he was asleep, but realizing this and recognizing this did nothing to steady the vertigo that greeted him the moment he opened his eyes. The entire room spun, and rounded him in a blur. The overpowering smell of mildew was no help, and for a moment he thought he'd throw up right then and there. Sleeping was supposed to help him, let his body recover as he rested, but he felt even worse than he did before he'd snuck under dirtied and mussed covers.

He squinted, then closed his eyes and reopened them to a much clearer room- to the much clearer vision of a woman standing at the doorway.

Isaac leaped up, grabbing the covers and tossing them off, and the stranger raised her hands in defense, taking a few steps forward into the light of the night sky peering in through the wall-length window of the bedroom. His aura flared, wide and wild, like an uncontained fire over his body. She chuckled, and he could hear she was nervous, but she still held her ground. "Hey, hey, hey! I'm not here to hurt you!"

She was young- maybe in her mid-twenties, dressed like it too. Who wore a leather jacket with fingerless gloves- oh right. She took another step closer, and he could see a streak of purple in the black bob that was her hair. Isaac pressed his back to the headboard, raising one hand cautiously to keep her at bay. "That's fine. I have to leave now, and I need you to not call the police."

"I can't do that."

Isaac sighed, and slid one leg over the side of the bed, readying himself to make a quick escape. He had no idea who this woman was, why she was there, or how she found him in the middle of a forest in an abandoned home… but it was sketchy, and he had more than enough injuries. "Look, you don't understand!"

"I do. If you just let me explain, I can help you."

Isaac frowned, and raised his hand higher, but nodded for her to continue. She sighed, and let her raised hands fall just a bit, elbows at waist-length, no longer at her chest. Her smile was calm, and confident, and he found himself interested in what she had to say.

Then there was a creak in the floor, and the stranger hadn't moved.

Isaac whipped around, lightning cracking at his hand, blue entangling and covering his fingers. He could only make out of the vague shadow of a tall, broad-shouldered man, and then the world around him went dark.

* * *

The club, upon a call from Mister Spender, had collected in the clubroom, and were then watching him pace back and forth, chin in his hand. Max had been the first to show, before even Spender had made his way to the clubroom, and met inquiring glances with a grimace and a shrug. He sat huddled on the couch, one leg (which Spender would usually demand be set on the floor) pulled to his chest, other swinging lifelessly over the side of the couch. Isabel sat to his right, then Dimitri, both looking confused, though Dimitri was far deeper in thought.

"None of this makes sense." Isabel leaned forward, elbow on her knee, cheek in palm. "How did Isaac get outside of the barrier?"

"That doesn't matter just yet." Dimitri hummed, eyes narrowed, somewhere far in the distance, passed the wall of the clubroom. "What matters is that they found a trail of his blood." Isabel sluncked back into the couch, sliding in on herself as she fell silent. "We need to take the train out to him as soon as possible."

Max shook his head. "We can't."

Dimitri blinked, eyebrow arched. "Why not?"

Isabel waved a dismissive hand, eyes shifting to the side. "Some things happened and the train is in a tool right now, recovering."

"If it's in a tool, that means it can be used."

"Not without Doctor Zarei," Isabel crossed her arms, lips in a thin line. There was a twitch in her, like her entire body couldn't settle, like her nerves were fried and she couldn't think straight. Dimitri was already watching her, but Max eyed her from the side. "Besides, we shouldn't anyway! Isaac made that choice and he's just gotta deal with it now."

Spender halted in his pacing, turning on her with wide eyes, and Dimitri's held no less surprise.

"Isabel…!"

"Don't you think that's a little harsh?"

Isabel shrugged, squirming under the unwanted attention.

"Okay, you know what?" Max sat up, and Isabel lurched backward when he prodded his finger in her face, an inch from her nose. His aura began to fester around him, black, so black it might have been growing darker with every bit of him that grew anxious, that grew angry. "Holding onto a grudge is one thing, I get why you're mad at him- but actively not helping him when he might be bleeding out somewhere is- is-!"

Isabel's aura flashed, hot, bright red against Max's black, teeth grinding, fists clenching. It took everything in her not to chomp down on the finger he stuck in her face, and so help her if it got any closer she might. She smacked his hand away and leaned closer, close enough that she could throw her head into his if she wanted to, leave a big bruise on his stupid face!

"Isaac is a traitor! He tried to sell us out to the entire world! Just because you got over it doesn't mean I have! He could have gotten us all kill-!"

" _ **Isabel."**_

She froze. Mister Spender rarely spoke like that… spoke like that to her. He was a funny man, a kind man, and when he was mad, his voice was deep, guttural, and every bit as tremble-inducing as her grandfather's. She bit down on her tongue, hard enough to make it bleed; she turned to look at him.

He was standing stiff, and though she couldn't see passed his glasses, she could tell, she knew, she could feel the anger flaring there, the power she sometimes forgot he had. She couldn't so much as twitch, she was paralyzed, staring back at him. He'd never been mad at her before, never like this. She felt a sting behind her eyes, and it was like she was a little kid, some stupid brat getting scolded for not sharing her toys, and she hated it. She hated being scared. Being guilty.

Spender turned away from her and walked to his desk, all at once releasing her from her prison and wringing her heart. She slumped further into her seat, biting down on the inside of her cheek. Max lost interest and turned to watch Spender, but Dimitri continued to stare.

Spender picked up his phone and dialed someone's number, back turned to them. "I'm going to give Zarei a call. We'll go searching for him tomorrow morning. Hopefully we won't be too late."


	6. Chapter 6

"You're insane!" Spender sighed. As a friend of Mina Zarei's, for most of his life, he'd expected her to, well, "go off" on him, and he'd known what he was getting himself into when he called her and asked to meet immediately. That didn't necessarily make handling her any easier. "Taking the train out of Mayview right now? It could take weeks to find your student! Maybe months!" She paced in circles around the street corner they'd met at, waving her arms around as she spoke. "And even if it doesn't, I could manage all of two trips passed the barrier! A third trip if we're feeling unimaginably lucky! And there are other agents, of much higher priority, that need to enter and exit this town!"

"I'm well aware. I'll return the children home once the weekend is over. Should we not find Isaac by then, I'll continue searching on my own. My mission is to save him, we can wait to find a way to bring him home."

Zarei fell silent beside him. He exhaled and watched the cold of the air turn his breath to a white, rounded cloud, then tugged his scarf over his mouth. The temperature was beginning to drop in their neck of the woods, and it only worried him more. _Bleeding? Wounded? And freezing? How could I let this happen…_

"Fine. I will offer my assistance this once, and just this once." Zarei scoffed and mumbled something under her breath, expression of disbelief along with some choice curse words, he thought he might have overheard. "You'd do well to keep in mind that Isaac O'Connor left Mayview of his own volition, Richard. He wasn't kidnapped."

His eye twitched. "He couldn't have gotten outside the city alone." He turned his sharp eyes on her, and she squinted back at him. "For all we know, somebody else left the note."

Her eyes widened, and her jaw dropped before it became firm, teeth grinding together. "You- I know you are not insinuating-!"

"You just seem awfully intent on keeping me behind this barrier! Why would you have reason to be so darn difficult if you weren't the one who aided in his escape!"

She leveled him with a glare, nose scrunching, corner of her lip curling like it was shriveling. Her aura swayed over her head, over her shoulders, but he remained unyielding, yellow creeping off of his skin. She seemed to think about something, he saw the thought process bubbling by like boiling water, before it evaporated, along with her aura. Her hands fell limp at her sides, and she shook her head. "I'm merely keeping our runaway in mind. That boy is no weakling, and he doesn't want to be found. Experience or not, you'll gain injury bringing him home."

Spender deflated. His aura dissipated, and the tenseness, like bricks, over his shoulders crumbled away, along with the anger, the suspicion. He frowned at her, brows furrowing. "I'm sorry. I should have known you were only worried for my safety."

She scoffed, and he couldn't tell if the blush of her skin was a result of the cold air, or the natural wall of his old friend Mina Zarei. "Who says I was worried? You're merely a patient, and it is my professional code to prevent and repair any harm that may come to you." She sighed, and shrugged that conversation off. "You don't need to paternal instincts have rushed you into a blind panic." Spender hoped Zarei gave his colored skin the same cold-air excuse he'd given her, but he knew he felt heat rising to his face.

"Wh-what? Whatever do you mean?"

Zarei chuckled, readjusting her scarf so that it covered more than just the skin of her lower collarbone. She was smiling at him, sardonically, and that always meant trouble for him. "You've never been one to take a job leasuriley. Your intentions were never those of a mentor."

He winced, and tugged at the collar of his heavy jacket.

* * *

Isaac stirred at the sunlight spilling in between two semi-closed curtains.

He should have had a headache, or at least a sore spot at the back of his skull, what with the blow to the head and all, but it was resting against what felt like a fluffy feathered pillow- like the one he had at home. His eyes, that had been squinting at the light of the window beside the bed he laid upon, opened fully. Home? He couldn't have been home? _I've gotta-!_ He tried to raise one hand to his head, and found his mind was far more awake than his body; his fingers twitched, but his arm wouldn't move. The near-constant nausea he'd been experiencing was but an extremely unpleasant memory, and the damp bandages that'd covered his body were completely dry, or maybe they were brand new? How long had he been out?

Isaac took a deep breath and urged his body to sit up. To his relief, it listened, and with will alone, he pressed the palms of his hands to the bed and raised his chest from the mattress.

"I wouldn't do that, if I were you."

He jumped, falling back against the bed with a yelp. He nibbled on the inside of his bottom lip, turning his head cautiously to the door at his right. A girl stood at the threshold, leaning against the wooden paneling as she tapped the butt-end of her pencil against a clipboard. His first thought was that she was a nurse, and that he was in a hospital of some sort- but that didn't fit. She wasn't in the normal nurse scrubs, she wore no gloves, and he was sure the pleated skirt she was wearing wasn't hospital-safe-attire. The biggest giveaway, more than her casual state of dress, was her age; she couldn't have been any older than him, actually.

Her eyes drifted from the board to him, almost teasingly, if he was reading her smile correctly. "You had three different infections in your abdomen, arm, and eye, not to mention food poisoning, and you were halfway to death's door when we found you. Blood loss and all that…" She set the board on the desk at the side of the door in stride, and approached him like he was an old friend, not a stranger. He instinctively curled up, pulling his body away from that side of the bed. She took a small pen out of her pocket, twirling it between her fingers before flicking on the light at the end. She held it over his eye, which he was just noticing was unbandaged, and he shut it. "Ah, ah! Don't do that. I need to see. Open." He didn't know why, but he listened, and she took his chin in her free fingers and pulled the light back, and then pressed it closer. "You nearly lost your eye, ya know. Be thankful ya didn't, you were awfully close to it."

He resisted the urge to blow a raspberry at her. "Who are you?"

Satisfied with whatever it was she saw, she tucked the pen away. "Oh, whoops. Yeah, guess I should have said something earlier. Sorry, dramatic effect and all." She gave him a smile, less teasing and more friendly. She smiled at him the way someone would had they been assigned partners for a science project, the way someone would smile if they were being introduced by a mutual friend. She held out a hand to him, nails suspiciously manicured for somebody who treated wounds… assuming she was, actually, responsible for his care. When he hesitated to respond, she reached out and took his hand in her own and shook it. "I'm Clara Appleby. Fellow spectral and nurse-in-training!"

Wait. _Fellow spectral?_

Isaac snatched his hand away, heart plummeting in his chest like she'd tied an anchor to it in a sea of- of- fear, panic, paranoia. "Wait, how did you-? Does that mean you're going to-?"

"Confine you to the bed for a few day's rest?" She shrugged. "Whatever is best for your wounds which, by the way, are now wrapped correctly."

He swallowed hard. Did that mean the woman from before was an agent of whatever secret gathering Spender had been a part of? Was she sent to capture and return him? No. It had to have been a coincidence. _There's no way i'm important enough for that…_

"Was there" he leaned up a little further, enough to draw Clara's eye, but not enough to warrant a scolding finger in his face. "Was there a woman involved? A woman who- who found me? I remember-"

Clara was nodding before he could even finish, cupping one hand over her mouth.

"MISS ROSE!"

"- a woman?"

His hands were on his ears even as the last words left him, and soon after, the booming sound of footsteps came clamoring to the door. Then she was there, bending over the doorway, heaving, the last face he remembered. Her leather jacket was falling off her shoulders, leaving one string of her purple tank up and one falling down the side of her arm. She had one hand on the hinge of the door and the other on her bare knee, and she looked exacerbated. "Clara, don't you do that unless it's an emergency!"

Clara shrugged. "Hey, new kid woke up! Said he wanted to see you." She gave him another wave and parted through the door, the woman- Miss Rose- sliding in as she slid out.

Things were silent for a moment, and Isaac took that time to observe his surroundings, since this was, decidedly, not his bedroom (thank goodness). The walls were olive green, very different from the pale blue of his wallpaper. The room was small, and only fit the bed he was in, a glass-door cabinet- filled with varying medicines, bandages, ointments…) at the foot of it, and a desk to the side, but it was homey, comfortable. He would have taken a glance out the window, but that would have required sitting up more, and he had a feeling, if the dull pain in his stomach was any indication, that to do so would mean a world of pain.

The woman- again, Miss Rose, he probably should remember that- looked to him, crossing her arms casually across her chest, using a hand to brush a strand of raven silk out of her face. "So, how ya feeling, kid? Isaac, right? I've seen you on the news-"

"You work for the people Spender works for, don't you?"

Miss Rose seemed startled, she blinked, then snorted. "Richard Spender? No. Gross. Actually, I'm with a group called the Cousinhood. Heard of 'em?"

"No…" Isaac turned away from her, setting one hand in his lap, at legs that still felt so tired and so weak, and the other at his wrist. "What's the difference?"

"Well," she came over to sit at the foot of his bed, crossing her legs, though her body was twisted to face him. "The people you're talking about are the Consortium." She set one hand at his leg, just above his foot, and he moved like she'd burnt him. He expected a look, a change in expression- irritation? Disappointment maybe? She only smiled and retracted her hand. "Anyway, the people I work for don't usually… like those people. But we coexist most of the time."

 _Okay, so if she doesn't have a reason to know who I am, then-?_ "How did you know I was a spectral?"

"I saw your aura when those police cars passed by."

 _Oh._ Isaac bit down on both his lips, red tingeing his cheeks. Miss Rose chuckled, and whatever embarassment he felt before skyrocketed well passed acceptable levels. He hated being in the activity club because of this exact feeling. Seemed he couldn't escape it. Still, even if he didn't end up in a hospital, or at home, surrounded by cops and paparazzi, he'd still be found, and by a spectral no less. The situation was just as bad as it had been before, except he'd been presumably stitched up, so physically, he supposed he was in a better position than he might have been before. "So, are you taking me back to Mayview?" He might have had a chance if he had to fight, at least a better one than he would have had fighting her earlier. He balled his hands into fists, legs tensing under the covers; he had to be ready to move.

Miss Rose hummed, placing one contemplative finger under her chin. "Well, that's probably a good idea, as not taking you back may just add fuel to fire with the whole unspoken war we've got going on," Isaac grimaced and shut his eyes tightly, he'd have to fight her "- but who the heck cares? I mean, you ended up here for a reason, didn't ya?" Wait, what? He turned his wide eyes on her, and when she reached out to pat his head with a smile, he let her. Her touch was soft, kind, warm like a mother's. He'd forgotten what that felt like, to feel a hand that gentle on his head. His nose twitched, and Miss Rose tittered to herself. "Well, I should go help Crawford with dinner. He gets so pouty when he has to do it all himself. Come join us when you're ready! I've got some people I want you to meet."

* * *

He wasn't wearing the jeans, shirt, or jacket he had been the day he left Mayview (for good reason, probably, they were covered in blood and worse), and when he glanced down at the blue button-up nightshirt and pants, it was odd to think about complete strangers undressing and dressing him- even weirder to think about a girl doing it, if Clara had any part in piecing him back together. He'd stayed in bed for another hour or so, just laying there, resting. He wondered if they'd found his cellphone in his back pocket, and if they had a charger for it at all. It was silly, but some part of him still felt the urge to check the web for the latest episodes of an anime or two he'd picked up the weeks before he'd taken off. He'd missed an entire month of episodes, after all. Something cool might have happened.

It was the smell of dinner that gave him the will to get out of bed. He smelled pepper, and garlic, and cheese, surprisingly, thankfully, no meat. He didn't know how to politely decline after all these strangers had done for him, turning his nose up at hospitality might have been hard. His stomach was growling at him, at he was reminded that he still hadn't eaten anything for two days, let alone how long he might have been out. For all he knew, it'd been far longer than just two days. "Okay, c'mon Isaac, you can do this." He took a few deep breaths, then pushed himself up off the bed. His abdomen was screaming at him, dull pain becoming heavy. He fought against it, squeezing his eyes shut as he pulled up, pulled forward. Eventually he came to a seated position, legs hanging over the side of the bed. There were slippers he hadn't noticed before, and he gratefully placed each foot in either one.

He left the room and looked to both sides, finding that, to the right, there was more of a hallway to explore, one door across the hall from him, one to his right, and then another diagonal to that room at the very end of the hall. To his left was a twisting staircase and, if his nose was correct, that was the way to the kitchen. He placed one hand on the wall and took careful steps toward the stairs, taking in the decoration around him. The walls were a mustard yellow, but the paneling was wooden and white and polished. There were no pictures or paintings to speak of, but there was a coffee table with a neat vase, filled with a single lily, jutting out the top, alongside a picture frame of what appeared to be Miss Rose- younger, his age. She was grinning to the camera with her arm around a tan boy, who seemed less than pleased to be snapping a picture. Between them, there was a smaller girl, still his age, but she seemed to-herself, bookish maybe. Wide-rimmed, rounded glasses did that to a person. It was the only picture in his line of sight.

He carried on down the stairs, hand clenching the railing so tight, he thought his nails might draw lines in the paint. Each step was slow, and scary, and quite a few times his body spazzed and his grip on the railing lessened. He paused, and took another breath, and continued. One foot after the other, until eventually he came to set a foot on the deep brown wood of what appeared to be the living room. A lime green couch sat before a stone-adorned fireplace, a small TV hanging upon the wall. There was a yellow carpet set below, and over it was another coffee table. This one was covered in neatly-placed remotes, some more pictures, which appeared to be of Clara and another kid, little older than them. There were two or three there, standing in frames beside a pile of teen magazines and, Isaac squinted, magazines with cars on the front? Huh. Behind the couch was a wide open floor with a large mat thrown down, probably for sparring, considering the spectral thing and all. And beyond that matt was the front door. He turned his head; the garlic and pepper and salt smell was wafting from the room to his right.

He pressed on to the kitchen, still careful, though he'd forgone his hold on the wall. The first thing he saw was a sliding glass door, leading to a wide open, grassy field on the other side of the room, and the rectangular dining table nestled between the open kitchen and that door. Clara was sitting at the very end of the table, legs crossed, as she occupied herself in deep conversation with- whoever that was, the weird beanie-wearing kid sitting across from her. Closest to Isaac were the counters, fridge, and literal cowboy standing there piling a mixture from a bowl into hollowed red and green peppers. Isaac closed his eyes, pinched the back of his hand, and opened them again; nope, cowboy was still there, large hat, guns at either hip, large buckle, boots and all.

That was when Clara noticed him, and she briefly jumped out of her conversation to lean forward and greet him. "Hey! Miss Rose gave you the clear to get out of bed, huh? Get over here!"

Isaac glanced from Clara, to the cowboy, and sighed because somehow the weirdness of Mayview had followed him.

He padded across the tile floor to the table, and the stranger wearing the beanie twisted around in his seat, one arm slung over the back of the chair. His eyes were dark brown, the darkest Isaac had ever seen, and he had a smug, cheerful grin on his face when he offered him a hand. "Isaac, right? Hardy Deering."

Isaac raised a hand, hesitantly, then went ahead and shook his hand. "Nice to meet you, Hardy, I guess."

"Oh uh," Hardy's grin turned sheepish, and he tugged at the bottom of his beanie. "Deering."

"Hardy."

He turned and gave Clara a glare. She only grinned and reached over to pat the chair next to her. "Come sit by me!" Isaac turned to give the odd cowboy another glance before slowly carrying himself over to the seat. Hardy turned back around to face them, and Isaac took another second to glance around the room.

"So, um, what is this place?"

"One of the Cousinhood's bases" Hardy shrugged "but to the rest of the world, we're a small, independent boarding school."

Isaac raised an eyebrow. "Wait, what? Why a boarding school?"

Clara leaned forward, setting her chin in her cupped hands. Isaac had her full attention, and he wasn't 100% sure how to feel about that. He never had anybody's full attention, let alone a stranger's. Hardy seemed more casual, chiller maybe. _More like Max._ "I mean, if you were a normal person, and you didn't know about all this spectral stuff" she waved her hand in a circular motion "wouldn't you find it a little creepy that there's a fully grown woman lugging around a bunch of kids she clearly has no relation to? It was either boarding school or orphanage."

"And, if she finds a kid with abilities," Hardy was toying with a pair of headphones, which were tangled around his neck like a necklace, fingers spinning one bud around and around. "Parents rarely want to relinquish all rights just 'cause some lady wants their kid. Legal system doesn't take too kindly to kidnap, so…"

"The Consortium has one, too."

"The Consortium?" _Wasn't that the secret agency Mister Spender worked for?_ "Are you talking about the Activity Club?"

"Yeah! So you do know it!" Clara pointed at the cowboy with her thumb "When Miss Rose and Crawford heard about it, they figured they'd level the playing field and start collecting spectral kids, ya know?"

Hardy mumbled under his breath. "Start teachin' 'em young."

"Wait," Isaac glanced between the two, "So they're basically grooming you guys to become Cousinhood agents? That's- something about that seems wrong!"

Clara looked to the ceiling, head bouncing back and forth as she weighed what he said with what she knew. "Yeah, but that's why the Consortium does it, too."

 _That's not-!_ Isaac went to retort, but found that he really didn't have anything to say. He didn't know anything about the Consortium, and that was their fault anyway. Who was he to jump to their defense? Who was he even trying to defend? Spender? _Well, I guess it's my fault they were keeping information from me, anyway. It's not my place to judge. I don't even know who came up with the club idea. Sounds like it's a new thing?_ He placed his hands on the table, moving to stand up. "I'm going to go to the bathro-" It happened fast, faster than he could catch. He felt something drift between his thighs, and when he glanced down, he found a steak knife, protruding out of the chair between his legs- it'd barely missed. Isaac squeaked, and made a move to jump out of the way of any other sharp kitchenware flying his way, raising his forearms over either side of his head.

"You're gonna sit your butt back down." His eyes met the cowboy's, and he was unsettled to see the sharp eyes of fatal intent staring back at him. He readjusted his hat, and gestured pointedly at the seat. "Dinner's ready."

Isaac alternated his gaze from the knife, to the man, then reached down and grabbed the handle of the knife, pulling it out with a little bit of force, before plopping back down into the seat. Content with that, the man returned to slipping on oven mitts before bending down to open the oven. Isaac only watched, mildly horrified, as a complete stranger, who only seconds ago played target practice with his limbs, pulled stuffed peppers from the oven and gave them a hearty sniff before setting them atop the counter to serve. Hardy leaned over, whispering to Isaac indiscreetly.

"You should see what he does when you don't clear off the table."

Miss Rose chose that moment to enter the room, running a towel over her head. She glanced over to Isaac, giving him a small, warm smile, and a wave in greeting. When she noticed the stuffed peppers were done, and the cowboy was using a spatula to place them on plates, she grinned from ear to ear and set the towel around her neck. "Smells delicious! Let's eat!"

* * *

"Are you sure you packed everything?"

Max groaned, doing his best to stuff the already towering mountain of shirts and jeans and metal into his backpack. "Yes, Dad. I'm sure." He'd noticed, with some curiosity and some irritation, that his father, in all his good intentions, had become much more accustomed to being a dad than he had in all of Max's twelve years of life. In fact, he dared say he'd become too accustomed- _almost Helicopter Dad accustomed._ It was almost like the monster attack on the school had changed him, freaked him out so much that he felt Max had to be in his line of sight 24/7, and though Max appreciated the overwhelming love and responsibility that radiated off his dad constantly now, he couldn't help but be concerned his dear father was taking things a little too far.

"Your toothbrush?"

"Yes."

"Your charger?"

"Yes."

"Your-?"

"Dad, look, I'm packed! I promise!" Max sighed, slipping his arm through the sleeve of his bag, tugging the strap over his shoulder. His eyes met the anxious, dread-filled pair of his father, and it took everything in him to glance away, to not agree to stay home. This was too important. Isaac was in trouble, bad trouble, the kind he'd stayed up at night thinking about. "You should" he tugged the other strap over his arm "trust Mister Spender more. He's been doing this a long time."

"Max," His dad came up behind, somehow managing to stuff his clothes and toiletries, which were still pouring over the side, into the bag, dragging the zipper up to secure the mess that was sure to spring on Max later, like a jack-in-the-box, when he readied himself for bed that night. "As much as I'd like to believe that this Mister Spender is a- a master jedi or something, I just" he set his hands on Max's shoulders and turned him around so they were face-to-face, and Max wondered if he knew he was giving him the parental equivalent of puppy-dog eyes. "I just don't know if I can trust this man yet."

"Dad, I'll be fine. We're just going to look for Isaac!"

"And Isaac has weather powers, right?" Zoey came around the corner, holding a can of generic soda, popping it open with her thumb and pointer finger. "What if he tries to fry you?"

Max frowned and closed his eyes.

" _We're not even friends. We never were."_

 _He'd said it one second, and the next, Isaac's fist, and Isabel's hand, were taking up his entire vision. He blinked, and Isaac's eyes met his. He could see the anger, the rage- he watched it all fade away, like somebody had taken a needle to a balloon and watched the air drift out and deflate. Anger turned to guilt, and rage turned to horror. Isaac went from an unstoppable force of judgement and nature to a fragile, trembling boy. Right in front of his eyes._

Max opened his eyes. "Isaac wouldn't do that." _Never again._

Twenty minutes later, after his dad had just about exhausted all of his probing questions (and Max's patience), he'd walked his son out to the car. Max tilted his cap and said goodbye, walking around the front of the car to open the passenger door and climb in. Spender rolled down the window and greeted Dad Puckett with an awkward grin. Puckett smiled and said hello, just as awkwardly.

Spender went in for a handshake, Puckett went for a high-five. They both noticed, and slowly tried to transition into what the other was doing. Spender raised his hand vertically and Puckett moved to set his hand horizontally, and their hands just brushed each other. They pulled back, chuckling even though neither found the situation at all humorous. They both read the other's mind and went in for a fist-bump- only to miss by an inch. At that point, they both gave up the pleasantries and shied away.

"Max!" Ed called up to the front seat from the middle of the backseat, smushed between Dimitri and Isabel. "Dimitri is touching me! I wanna switch seats!"

Dimitri raised an eyebrow, turning from the window to his peer. "You're the one with a finger in my personal bubble. 'Sides it doesn't work that way."

Max leaned further back into the front passenger seat, slumping down for good measure. "I'm sitting as far away from you all as possible. I don't want to risk your uncoolness slipping off on me."

Dad Puckett smiled at his son, then exhaled heavily. "Mister Spender. I'm hoping Max will return in one piece."

The gawky smile on Spender's face fell to a frown, and he nodded to confirm he'd heard the word of a concerned parent. It was, after all, his job as a teacher. "I promise you, I will never intentionally put your son in danger."

Dad Puckett laughed under his breath, raising a hand to run through the hair that was loose from his messy ponytail. "I don't want promises you won't put him in danger, I want your word you'll keep him out of it, too."

Spender blinked, and before he could process what Puckett had said, he was pulling away from the window. Silently, unsurely, Spender rolled the window back up, then lifted his foot from the brake. The car started with no problem, and drove away, leaving only Dad Puckett standing behind, watching as his son drove off.

* * *

"Stop the car!" Ed was in the middle of a fit, throwing his arms around the car in screaming like a child- probably because it was making Isabel laugh, though Max and Spender were more or less feeling grinded by the noise. "I have to pee! I have to pee!" Isabel was cackling, holding her sides and bending over, and Ed was almost intentionally throwing his fists, softly, in her direction. She batted him off, but that made it all the more difficult to keep her giggles in check. Dimitri was unfazed, if he noticed Ed's fake tantrum at all with his headphones on.

Spender groaned, fingers tapping rhythmically on the steering wheel. "Ed, please. We just left Mayview thirty minutes ago. It's nine o'clock in the morning."

Ed paused in his fit, setting his hands at his knees. "Okay, but no, seriously, I really need to pee."

Spender slammed his forehead against the wheel, then looked back at the road. It took them a minute, maybe a minute thirty-seconds, but they came across a convenience store, empty and unburdened by cars and people, aside from a single truck pulled up near the employee entrance, and a police car parked by the front doors. He pulled into the spot furthest from the door, then gestured for everyone to get out. "Don't take too long, children. Isaac is waiting for us!"

The convenience store was no more impressive than any that might have been found in Mayview- even less impressive than the one Max lived in, actually. His convenience store had an entire upper floor with a sweet family room pit. Good luck topping that… not that there would have been much point in a convenience store being so impressive. People would stop by regardless. THe group parted, Ed to the bathrooms, Isabel to the slushy machine, Dimitri and Spender to the rows and rows of snacks, and Max, well, he wandered around near the front where the candy was. The two cops, who more than likely belonged to the car parked out front, didn't appear to be checking out anything, and the cashier seemed a little more than concerned with whatever conversation the three of them were holding. Max, doing his best spy impression, moved his attention on the candy further back, inching his way to the candy at the front of the small aisle.

"That boy that came in a week ago, the one you called in?" Max's ear perked. "We have reason to believe it was Isaac O'Connor."

The cashier gasped, raising one hand to her lips, looking between the two officers with wide eyes. "Oh no, you're kidding me… oh crap! I should have kept a better eye on him! I thought he looked suspicious but-!"

The other officer, who was taller and broader in the shoulders than the other, set a comforting hand at her shoulder. "Would you tell us what happened? We're hoping you could give us some clues."

"Well, nothing I haven't already told the police! He came in near the end of my shift, and he went to the bathroom. I don't think he came out, I didn't see him anyway, but he was in there for a long time, and I didn't really notice 'til I heard him screaming." There, her voice started to crack, her eyes started to water, and she did her best to hold them back, shaking her head and using the sides of her fingers to wipe away the salt gathering. "It was… it was the worst thing I'd ever heard. You know, you hear somebody scream like that in a movie, it's scary, ya know, but- but hearing somebody, hearing somebody scream like that in person…"

Max grimaced. _Probably too much to hope he just ate something bad…_

He made his way over to the salted snacks aisle, as fast as he could without looking suspicious- for what? He wasn't sure, but the whole spectral thing had him on guard, and none of them needed any extra attention. Spender had just taken a bag of chips off the rack when Max set a hand at his arm. Spender turned to look at him. "Oh, Max! Have you picked out something? This weekend is on me-"

"It's Isaac." He pointed, subtly, to the front counter, and Spender followed his line of sight. "He was here. She saw him. She…" he swallowed. Just thinking about it was hard. The imagination was almost always worse than the reality, but he wasn't so sure at this point. "She heard him screaming. Bloody murder. Like h- he was being attacked or-!"

"It's worse than I thought." Spender frowned, and Max was sure he'd crushed the bag of chips in his clenched hand. "We need to move quicker.

Ed stepped out of the bathroom, wiping his wet hands on the sides of his jeans. Isabel came to his side, doing her best to stick a top on her already-overfilled slushy without making a mess for the one employee on the clock. She looked up at him, and he gestured to the bathroom stiffly. "I think that is the creepiest public restroom I have ever used, and I am including the one I used in that haunted house when I was five and a ghoul jumped out at me mid-flush."

Isabel smiled at him, and sure she laughed, but it was forced, he could tell; he always could tell. He stepped closer to her, and held the cup still as she wrestled with the top. After a moment she got it on, and she thanked him, but that still wasn't it. "So, are you going to tell me what's wrong or do I have to start a tickle fight with you in public?" She blinked, and he narrowed his eyes. "Don't test me, Isabel. I will do it."

Again, she laughed, but the usual charm wasn't there. She frowned at him, then at the floor, fingers tapping along her large styrofoam cup. "Hey, Ed? Are you worried about Isaac?"

He frowned back at her, and tilted his head. "Of course I am!"

That must not have been the answer she was looking for, because she turned her head away, and didn't bother to part the hair that'd fallen into her face. Ed took a step forward, setting a gentle hand at her arm, just below her shoulder. "Izzy, what's wrong?"

"It's just-" she paused, then turned to look at him, annoyance, annoyance at somebody and he wasn't sure who, twinkling in the iris of her eye. "I'm not! I'm not worried about Isaac! Whenever I think about him, I ju- just feel numb! So what, he came back for us? Well, he was the reason we were in a cell to begin with!" Her voice was raised dangerously high, but not high enough he was super worried about it. A convenience store had to be one of the least embarrassing places to be a public disturbance, and the place least likely to have people take you seriously. Their conversation was likely falling on deaf ears. "I'm still mad at him! Even if he is in danger, is it really our problem? He left on his own!"

"Is that what this is really about?" She huffed and pouted up at him, and he tilted his head. "Because maybe, you're covering up what you're really feeling with what you're used to feeling. Maybe you're so worried about him, that you can't help but repress it because you don't know how else to handle it? You know, a defense mechanism." Isabel stared at him, wide-eyed for a moment. Her lips parted, but she had nothing to say, and her mind was reeling behind her eyes, her expressive eyes where he could always tell what was running through her head. Then she set her slushy aside, on the sidebar where people usually added milk and sugar to their coffee, and leaped into his arms, squeezing him around the neck.

He started, falling back a step before catching her, hands set unsurely just below her shoulders. Something was different this time, and he couldn't, for the life of him, piece together why it was that Isabel felt perfectly molded against him, why the tug of her arms around his neck were electric and intoxicating all at once, or why the hair that'd flown in his face, because she'd held him so suddenly, felt as soft as a steady stream of water against his nose. She balled her hands in fists at his back, and pulled him even closer. "I-Izzy!"

"Ed, thank you."

His heart flipped, and he wasn't sure his eyes could be any wider. He eventually figured out that his hands should have been at her waist, and he set them there accordingly. Before long, before it got weird, she pulled away, but not too far. She giggled and pressed a finger to his nose. "What're you blushing for?"

"I-I'm not!" He said, as he started blushing even more.


	7. Chapter 7

The little one was strong, stronger than her peers anyway, for the moment. Catriona chalked it down to her being a quick learner. The other two were older, had more useless memory clogging the brain, slowing them down. The little one's issue, she noted, was her lack of desire, her unwillingness to land a hit- a good one.

Her name was Aderyn, and his name, the name of the boy she'd found with a paper bag over glass and liquor, his name was Esen. They moved together well, throwing light fists, dancing from one end of the rock wall to the other. They danced as if in flight, faster than they had once been, but sloppy just the same, though they knew each other well. His fist fell beside her cheek, and she turned, twisted away, dodged though she could have landed a knee in his chest. Like a bird, like the air, they went back and forth, exchanging hits and taking none. To the untrained eye, they were practiced. Catriona crossed her arms, a twitch in her nose; to her eye, they were undisciplined and weak. The third student, waiting for his turn, Harlow, watched on at her side, eyes narrowed, filled with the same concern- his peers were holding back.

She clicked her tongue at the roof of her mouth. "Hit harder! Are you scared?" They both winced, and leaped away from each other, landing feet apart. "We have no room for hesitation in our mission! Either you take this seriously and draw some blood, or we toss you back to the blind world you came from!"

They jumped at each other at her word, hands raised, balled, intent to maim.

She smiled, and recognized with no great concern that the world around her began to melt into darkness, illuminated as the night sky by the stars that came to shine around her, by the bodies of color that became of her student's bodies, frozen momentarily. Even Harlow became little more than a white outline, filled with brilliant hues of purples and blues. He'd taken her into his world once more.

"Our students are improving faster than anticipated…"

"Hm, perhaps that is true for you, but I find myself almost disappointed." Her fingers tapped to no rhythm below her shoulders, each clenching her skin almost painfully between every tap. She might have bruised herself. "They should be further along by now."

His hands reached up and fell over her own, brushing against the backs of her hands as he entwined their fingers, moving so they held him, not her swollen skin. Even after so many years, even after she'd been with him more than half her life by now, her heart leapt. She leaned into him, sighed as she fell against the tone of his chest, felt his broad shoulders square up and level her. "You are too hard on yourself, my love. Had you not been so brilliant, they'd have not made it a day under our wing."

"Please," she giggled, squeezing his thumbs as he squeezed her hands. "They would not fear me if it wasn't for your power."

He chuckled, and she felt it against her back. "He will be pleased, Catriona."

"You think?"

"I know."

He faded from her then, darkness giving way to the dim light of their home as her students continued undisturbed- she was pleased to find Aderyn's fist inflamed, and Esen's lip cut.

* * *

In the years he'd been a spectral, in the years he'd been under the wing of Mister Spender, he'd never really seen a sparring match, and he'd never really participated in one. He figured his powers would always be enough, and he'd assumed Spender (and the Activity Club's parent organization- The Consortium, weird name) just agreed with him. Now, seeing Hardy taking kicks to the side, seeing Clara raise her forearms and brace herself for a heavy punch from Hardy, he wondered if that, too, was another thing he'd simply been deemed unworthy of. Hardy used one hand to distract Clara, make her think he was going in for a punch, and he pressed his fingers to her chest while she wasn't looking.

Deep emerald green lit her chin, and she yelped as Hardy sent her back on unbalanced feet; Isaac winced. She stumbled for a moment, but by the time Hardy took another spectral shot, she had the momentum to slide out of range.

"Excellent shot, Hardy! Smart move! Clara, nice recovery time! Keep going, you two!" Miss Rose was grinning, wide like a child, and he wondered just how much pleasure she was deriving from a simple training session. "Nice flexibility, Hardy! Gotta work on that speed, though! Clara, maybe Hardy could teach you a few things about stretching before a match! It counts!" Isaac watched her from the corner of his eye, deciding whether or not he should trust her, still unsure about her, about Crawford, about anything. For all he knew, he was being tricked, in some kinda mind trap like the genjutsu in Naruto. For all he knew, he was still in that abandoned cabin, bleeding out while the physical body of Miss Rose stood towering over him with some kind of maniacal grin on her face. He remembered being knocked out, after all, and it wasn't like anybody in this dojo had apologized for clocking him upside the head.

But watching Miss Rose in the moment, watching the way she bared her teeth to hiss when she called a foul, when the hands at her hips squeezed her jacket every time one of her students cried out, or squeaked- he thought she almost looked proud.

"Whoa, whoa! Take it easy, you two. We're not trying to break bones! If one of you breaks another kneecap, you're going to Crawford, not me!"

Hardy and Clara visibly shivered.

"You know," Isaac started, then paused. Miss Rose turned to look at him, using one hand, asking him to continue. He nibbled on his tongue, then sighed. "I've never actually been trained. At least, not like this."

He waited for a response, and found nothing. He chanced a glance at her; she was wide-eyed, furrow-browed, open-mouthed. She blinked a few times, then turned her focus back on the sparring match. That must have been the end of that, so Isaac turned away too.

"I see. We'll have to change that."

He looked to her from the side again, and he found her concentrated, thinking, lost in something he couldn't decipher by just the squint of her eye. So he gave up, for the moment.

* * *

Hearing about the blood trail and seeing it were two very different things.

The mood of the club dropped distinctly no longer than three minutes upon wandering beyond the police tape, along with the heart Max was still surprised could somehow manage to fall even further into the pits of his stomach. They followed the trail, five minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty… then it stopped. There was one small puddle, a bloody footprint clearly wiped away in the grass- Isaac realized he'd been leading the police right to him. If the mood had been low before, it'd made a dent in the ground, then.

"Well," Spender hummed, then reached up, as inconspicuously as possible, to wipe away a bead of sweat that'd gathered at and fallen from his brow. "The trail appears to end here. We should split up, then. If the police haven't found him yet, there's a reason why."

He carried off in one direction with a hunch-backed purpose, almost like he had an idea where he was going, like he dreaded it. The club looked to each other, left to divide among themselves. Ed turned to Isabel, and found Dimitri snaking an arm around her shoulders. Isabel seemed surprised, not unsettled, and leaned into the touch with a familiarity Ed had been unaware they had. "Let's head west if he'd going East."

"All right. You know you don't have to be this close to me, right? Mayview is filled with ten times the spirits this dingy park is."

"Yeah, I know."

Dimitri pulled Isabel off to the side, and she followed with no hesitation. Dimitri glanced over their shoulders, back at Ed, who stood with one outstretched hand meant for failure, or for nothing at all. Their eyes met; Dimitri was blank, clean, no emotion but the cool of his attitude, of him- it was, perhaps, the most silent threat Ed had ever received.

He winced and turned away, cheeks growing rosy and hot, a stark contrast to the cold that was settling, even over the city miles away.

Max, on the other hand, shrugged, and tailed after Spender. If anything, he was curious, and it seemed like Spender had answers to questions Max didn't even know to ask. He'd be quiet.

* * *

It wasn't long before Spender had wandered- weaved easily- through the park's abundant forest, leading Max straight to a small structure settled somewhere in the near distance. It was at the front door that Spender seemed to pause, still, like stone at the old and eroded welcome mat. Upon closer inspection, the structure was small, made of logs of wood. The walkway to the door, steps round and made of colored rock or cement, were covered in weeds that weaved in and out each circle, some sprouting beside the flowers along the pathway, flowers that had been dead for a long time. It must have been a home at some point. Max frowned, and moved in closer- no use hiding anymore.

"Did you know this was here?"

Spender yelped, twisting around with his hands pressed to his chest. He nearly snickered. "Max! I- did you follow me?"

"You said split up, so we split up. I just happened to split with you."

Spender coughed into his hand and gave Max a nervous, ticking smile. "Ah, well, I suppose we should continue looking, then!"

Max reached into his back pocket and pulled out his cellphone, snapping it open in a more obnoxious manner than he usually would. He clicked the message composition button and scrolled to find Ed's number. Spender winced and bent over him to take a look at the screen, to which Max obliged and inched his head out of full view. "What are you doing?"

"Texting the others. If Isaac's managed to somehow avoid the police in this forest, I'd imagine this would be the place to do it."

"Yes, well I'm not entirely sure! After all, an abandoned cabin? Wouldn't that be the first place the police would look?"

"Not if they couldn't see it." Spender fell silent, and Max sent the last of the messages before sticking his cellphone back in his pocket. He glanced up at Spender, under the rim of his cap, watching as he visibly swallowed. "That was a barrier we passed earlier, wasn't it? Well, maybe not a barrier, but some type of spectral mirage." He pointed his thumb to the thick woods around them, the direction from whence they'd come. Spender's eyes trailed him. "I'm guessing normal people can't pass that barrier?"

"They can," His voice was barely audible under the gruffness, under the caution he was trying to bite back. He was nervous, and Max was starting to piece together why. "They just can't see anything passed it."

"So this house is, uh" Max stuffed his hands in his pockets so he wouldn't scratch at his cheek. He was getting scared, but he had a an image to protect. "Is this place, uh, spectrally important?"

"That's half of it."

"Oh," He laughed. He wasn't sure why he laughed. "Well, the others are on their way."

"I see. We should get in and get out."

"Why?"

Spender fell silent again, turning instead to the front door and pressing it open. Max noticed that ease with which he did- lock was broken, not a great sign for his nerves, but it was also a sign Isaac had been there. Not that he assumed Isaac went around breaking locks and trespassing in homes, even though part of him (presumably the part that'd spent his energy on freaking out about how Isaac was eating and drinking and sleeping) was screaming _that's exactly what you should be doing you dumb ginger idiot!_ Max frowned and followed him inside, hands squeezing the insides of his pockets so hard he thought they might tear. _Please be be alive. Please be alive._

* * *

Spender went to check the family room while Max went to scour the dark and ominous hallway, wishing for the first time in a while that he wouldn't find Isaac's dead body in some creepy horror-movie-looking bathroom. He still wanted to find him, but not that bad. Not bad enough even finding him curled in a ball, cold-skinned and lifeless would be a success. No. Isaac had to be alive. Had to have found some way to bandage himself up. Max set a hand at his gut and clenched his Insolent Children hoodie by the front pockets. The first door was wide open, light flickering into the heavy blackness of the hallway. Every instinct he had, every flight his body wanted to take, he resisted. He had to keep going. He just had to know. With every step he took, a stench of something rancid grew in strength, reaching for his nose and strangling his nostrils until he could almost feel a large green hand roaming down the length of his throat, grasping at his lungs and choking what little clean air he could reach out of him. He couldn't describe it, couldn't pinpoint what the smell was or its familiarity, why its strength filled him with so much dread and… nausea?

 _That's puke. I'm smelling vomit._

Max instinctively raised a hand and covered his mouth, sucking in his stomach as he blanched. But there was something else, too, a stench less familiar, but equally as unsettling, something that made his bones rattle under his skin. He trembled at the shoulders and pushed onward, pressing his back against the wall, that way, he could peek around the corner. With one hand resting at the doorway, clenching the paneling so tightly his fists were turning white, Max inched over to take a look.

Blood. Blood at the floor near the toilet, blood on the seat, a trail along the sink and counter. There was a small puddle of it, enough he'd have thought a small animal met its bitter end at the foot of the shower, but he knew better, and that was so much worse than just the smell. He fell to his hind end, using his legs to push his way back to the wall behind him, nails scratching at the floor, teeth grinding.

That was too much blood. Too much for him to have bandaged himself up. Too much for him to rationally-!

"Yikes. That's not good."

Max's head shot to Ed, who stood at the doorway with two fingers at his nose. "Ed! When did you get here!"

"Hey."

He glanced between Max and the bathroom, eyebrows furrowing, lips thinning. Max pulled one of his legs to his chest, then rested his elbow at his knee and his cheek in his hand. His whole body was shivering, and for the first time he couldn't fight it, couldn't stop it. There was a fear there, a fear he hadn't known before. He wasn't sure why, or more specifically _why_ , he just knew there was blood, that it was all dry, that there was a puddle and no body. "We have to find Isaac. Fast."

"Max, can I ask you something?"

"What?" He blinked, his mind, which had been unraveling, coming back together to face a reality he couldn't make sense of. "Why? What?"

Ed turned to him, head tilted, like a dog trying to understand. "You seem really worried" Max gestured pointedly, disbelievingly, irritably, at the blood-covered bathroom, and Ed continued on unperturbed "- more worried than any of us. Like, way more worried. I mean, we're all scared pantsless, but not like…" he gestured to Max with as much obnoxious energy as Max had used "you are."

Max frowned, and took a moment to think about it all. The constant worrying, the fear he couldn't explain, the fact that he kept thinking about the same moment, the moment where it all came crashing down, where everything started, this entire mess. He couldn't escape it. It always came back, always was in the back of his mind, sitting there waiting for his train of thought to lead him right to it. It'd been bothering him longer than Isaac had been missing, and there was only one explanation for it. "I never got a chance to talk to him about it." Ed said nothing, but he didn't move either, so he was listening, probably "Our fight. We didn't get to talk about it." That's what scared him, the guilt weighing down on his shoulders. If Isaac wasn't okay, if something happened to him, if he died out here…

He didn't want to think about it.

"We should tell Mister Spender."

* * *

When they reached the bedroom at the end of the hallway, they were met with the backs of Isabel and Dimitri, and the inquiring face of Spender, who held a picture frame in one hand. The others turned to greet them, and Max pointed to the picture. "Who's that?"

Spender sighed, and held out the frame for the club to see. A young woman, orange hair, dull, creepily lifeless brown eyes, and a wide smile. She was pretty, he guessed, pretty and terrifying. "She was an agent of the Consortium a long time ago, before any of you were born. Quit around half a year in." His nose scrunched, and his cheeks turned a pale green. "She fell in love with a spirit." There was a chorus of "ew's" and "yick's", and Spender grimaced in agreement.

"Wait, are we talking like my spirit, or like, a humanoid spirit?" Max lifted his bat. "'Cause mine's a giant snake so…"

Isabel grabbed the closest arm, Dimitri's, and squeezed it hard enough he winced. "Oh god I hope not!"

Ed chimed in. "Hey, she coulda been into some weird stuff."

"Ed."

"New meaning to the term _snake charmer_."

"Ed."

Spender set the photo down, but his gaze still fell to the face, a woman he hadn't even known (well, anyway. He'd just been a child). "Anyway, her spirit started causing trouble, terrorizing ghosts, making a ruckus in public. He was a poltergeist, an annoying one at that. The Consortium had to get involved."

"Wait, so they-?" Max mimed a line straight across the throat.

"Yes. And they lost an agent for it. Catriona disappeared the morning after. We haven't heard from her again, to my understanding." He seemed to get lost in thought, eyes narrowing as he glanced around the rest of the room. He was almost distracted, like Isaac wasn't his top priority, like there was something else worrying him. "We should get moving."

"Yeah, we should." The room turned to look at Max. He readjusted his cap and steeled himself. "'Cause Isaac's in serious trouble, if we're going by the blood all over the bathroom."

* * *

Isaac woke up, in the dead of night, and found it difficult to move his arms, and his legs, and his torso- pretty much his whole body. To his left snuggled Clara, who had her forehead at his shoulder and his arm clenched between either of her arms and both of her curled legs. To his right, Hardy had his arms 'round his hips, and his head dug into his waist, huddled close like a teddy bear.

It took him a good fifteen minutes to free himself of either extra body, and another three minutes to climb off the king-size bed without waking either of them.

Originally he'd just intended to use the restroom, but upon returning to the bedroom, where Clara and Hardy had taken to grasping at each other from across the bed, he decided he was far too awake to go back to sleep; he wanted to wander around a little.

He snuck his way down the stairs, careful to take each step as light as he possibly could. He was light on his feet naturally, having wind powers for two years would do that to a person, but there was something about Miss Rose that told him he'd have to put some effort into sneaking around.

There had to be something she was hiding, something he didn't know about. She had no reason to be so nice to him, no reason to not toss him back to the wolves in Mayview, and yet she kept him, took him in like he was just another student in her boarding school- integration system. At least, that was assuming she was telling the truth about the Consortium, and the Cousinhood, and literally everything else. She'd been nice enough to patch him up, to heal him and feed him and- he glanced down at the blue nighty- clothe him. But why? Who would do that for some random kid? _Especially me._

She didn't know, maybe. She couldn't have known he'd sold out his friends, nearly the whole spectral world, nearly sent them all into a civil war between spectrals and non-spectrals. But news spreads fast, so maybe she did know. Maybe she knew and he'd fallen into a trap. Maybe getting stuck with whatever Mister Spender would have done to him would have been the better scenario! Maybe he was being lulled into a false sense of security! Isaac closed his eyes and took a shallow breath as his foot touched the last step.

If that was the case, he'd find a way to escape. Everything would be fine.

He was well-acquainted with the sparring mat and the living room, as well as the kitchen and backyard. No, what he was looking for would be down the hall mirroring the hall on the second floor, the place he hadn't gone, with or without an escort. He padded over to the first door and twisted the handle, peeking in. Another bathroom. He went to the next door and pressed it open as quietly as possible, careful not to make it creek. It was a library- a very messy, very unorganized library. Books sat wide open on the floor, and other hung over the sides of shelves. Slips of paper flew in the gust of wind he'd caused upon opening the door, and he decided that, while he definitely wants to check this room out later, it probably wasn't something being kept from him.

He came to a final door at the very end of the hallway, and when he reached for the handle, he held his breath.

On the other side, there was a podium, and on that podium, held up by a small stand as if he'd stepped into a museum, was a dagger. He blinked, and stepped cautiously into the room, glancing around for any indicators of lasers or machine turrets- there was nothing, and surprisingly enough, there was nothing else in the room. Definitely secret-worthy.

He approached the dagger slowly, glancing around the room as he did, as there was no way to be too careful in this situation. He turned his attention back to the dagger, frowning as he took in the carvings. The handle was nearly iridescent, purely clear save for the tint of ghostly blue and the thin encryption of gold reaching across the handle like cracks in the earth's crust. The dagger itself was silver, silver and sharp. Along its length were letters, letters in a language he didn't know, couldn't decipher, had no way of understanding. And still, he stepped closer, and raised one hand to touch it, like an idiot. He was curious, and after years of being starved for information, after years of struggling to obtain all that he knows through cryptic words and tidbits of information that meant nothing to him until he pieced a bunch of them together, he just wanted to know something new, It was right there, it was in front of him. He wanted to learn about it.

"Gotcha!"

Isaac screeched and leaped as two hands latched to either of his sides and tickled him. He twisted around, hands raised, lightning cracking at his fingertips, to find Miss Rose standing there, hands at her hips, with a smile on her face. "Cool looking, isn't it?"

"Huh?"

She reached out, and he shut his eyes tight and bowed his head, ready for a blow to the noggin or a scorn scolding. Instead her palm brushed right by his ear, then pulled back. "The dagger! It's pretty cool-looking!"

Isaac squinted behind eyes too unsure to open, then openly gaped at her as she waved it around in front of him. She looked almost like a child, playing around with a toy airplane and not a very scary, very sharp weapon. He instinctively took a step back. "Hee hee! Sorry, just wanted t' scare ya! Figured out what it does yet?"

"What it does?" He rose an eyebrow. "That's a tool?"

"'Course!" She held it out for him to see, laying it horizontally in both hands so he could it in full. He leaned forward to look at it, and she held it out a little further. "It's an ancient relic from the first spectrals that walked the earth. Super old, huh? That's why I haven't been able to decipher that language on the blade. As far as Cousinhood knowledge goes anyway, there isn't a book I've found to translate with. Kind of annoying, actually." She turned it around so he could see the other side. "Anyway, I've done some research and found a few first-hand accounts from other spectrals, done some field-testing myself. It's pretty cool. Cuts right through a spirit's last stand, which is the ghost that wanders around-"

"- and can possess somebody to make them a medium. Yeah, I know that much." Isaac pulled away from it, one hand clutching at the bottom of his shirt. "Freaky."

"That's not even the scary part." Miss Rose moved to set it back on the stand, careful to balance it on the podium. Looked more difficult than it probably was. "It doesn't just work on spirits. It works on humans, too."

"What?"

She pulled back, content with the dagger's balance, and he watched her, wide-eyed, semi-horrified. She turned to him, and she was smiling, and laughing, but he could catch the nerves in her chuckle. "Yeah, that thing can cut straight through a human, too, leave them without a ghost. I haven't tested it yet, but I'm pretty sure it can kill a medium and their spirit in one swoop."

Well that was… uniquely horrifying. He'd heard of some scary tools before, seen some spectrals do some scary things, but that took the cake.

"I haven't figured out how it does what it does or why, but my best guess is it was used to keep people in line when spectrals first became a thing. A medium going insane with power would have probably been undesirable. Might even be an explanation for things like vampires, ya know? If they were actually mediums who could draw power from blood? Stick 'em with a stake? Except, ya know, it's a dagger. But information gets murky as time goes on." Isaac nodded wordlessly, and his face must have looked just as petrified as he felt, because she gave him a smile and changed the subject fast enough to give him whiplash. "Anyway, it was passed down to me by my mentor when I first joined the Cousinhood. Most of my spare time is spent researching spectral artifacts, so I was a shoe-in, I guess. Haven't been able to find much we didn't already know, though."

"Is _we_ the Cousinhood?"

She sighed. "Yeah." He was surprised when she set a hand on his head, and more surprised to find her ruffling his hair. Their eyes met, and he saw it again, the same look she gave Hardy and Clara whenever they were sparring, the same look she gave him when she introduced herself, when she told him she wasn't gonna turn him in. He couldn't understand what it was, couldn't place that look in all the eyes he'd ever seen. Well, he could, it just wasn't one he'd seen in a very, very long time.

Since he was a little kid. Since he was still his mom's priority.

"Hey, you should get back to bed, don't ya think?" He shut one eye as her hand fell to cup his cheek, and she bent over as though she was talking to a baby, to a four-year-old, but something about it wasn't so demoralizing. "I'm no kid expert or anything, but I think you need more sleep than we adults do."

"I'm not a kid! I'm thirteen!"

"Oh, whoops, my bad!" She was being sarcastic, and that grinded his nerves, but the hand at his shoulder that turned him around was calming, kind, and his defenses dropped- his anger dropped. "That's even worse, probably, kids- teenagers- your age need more sleep than literally anyone. Let's get you back to bed."

* * *

The car was silent, silent enough that he must have fallen asleep. Max woke up to the passing streetlights of a main road- the road leading to Mayview, he recognized it, it was fresh enough in his memory. He tried to clear his eyes, blink away the blurriness of the world around him and the crust burrowed in the corners of his eyes. He felt stiff, sluggish, like his whole body was yet to wake up with him. He had to move around a bit. He went to sit forward, and found his shoulders pinned to the backseat of the car, Isabel's head on one shoulder, Ed's on the other. He frowned and turned to the front seats, where Dimitri's head was lulling to the side, and Spender was hardly clinging to the last bits of energy he had left. His head was tilted to the windshield, hands clutching and releasing the wheel in rhythm. Max frowned and leaned back into the seat, trying to piece together why they'd be driving back to Mayview without having found Isaac.

Wait. They hadn't found Isaac.

The car came to a stop outside the barrier, and Spender unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the car door. Max leaned forward, eyes widening as Zarei stepped up to the driver's side, greeting Spender as he exited the vehicle. "H-Hey!" Both turned to face him, surprised, given their slacking jaws, that he was awake. "Why are you dropping us off at home a day early?"

Spender grimaced, and turned away- _he's refusing to look at me_. "I have my reasons."

He climbed out of the car, and Zarei climbed in. He was screaming inside, eager to stop this, to stop time as it was passing him by, because he wasn't ready to go home yet. He wasn't ready to give up! "Did you have any luck?"

Spender's frown deepened, and he spoke in a hushed tone, still, Max heard him. "I'll let you know by tomorrow afternoon, hopefully."

Max pressed lightly against Isabel, trying to pull off of her, pull away, get away. "Hey, if you're still gonna look for Isaac, then I want to-!"

Spender shook his head. "You can't."

"Why the flip not?"

Zarei lifted one finger to her lips, a small gesture to keep him quiet. He bit both his lips to keep from arguing, from saying something stupid. When he proved he was collected, somewhat at least, she turned around and shifted her arm through the handle of the lantern, placing that hand at the wheel. Her back turned to him. "Because. You might not like what you find. There's great pain ahead of you simply as a result of your sixth sense." Spender went from passive and heavy and tired to anxious and desperate in a moment, arms and hands waving around frantically, trying to tell Zarei to _stop right there_. If she noticed, she didn't pay him any mind. "We're trying to keep your scarring life experiences to a minimum."

Max's eyes widened. His heart had fallen so often, so far, so recently, he wasn't sure he even had one anymore. He could hardly move a muscle, but he needed to know, had to know, if that's really what was happening, if he was really reading all the context clues, interpreting the right message-

"Y- you think Isaac's dead!"


	8. Chapter 8

"Come on, Red. Give me something to work with, here."

Isaac bit down on both his lips, a nervous tick, one Hardy picked up on. He was watching him from across the training mat, legs bent, hands at the defensive, and if the grin itching to grow on his face got any bigger, Isaac might have felt somewhat unsettled- ya know, unless he could use his powers, which he wasn't about to, especially when this sparring match was going unsupervised.

He'd woken that morning to Hardy shoving his face into the smooth fabric of his nighty, nose jabbing into his stomach uncomfortably close to his belly-button, and an empty space where Clara usually laid at his other side. Her imprint was there, but the arm she'd usually taken governance of was free and belonging entirely to him for the morning. He'd roused Hardy from his beauty sleep and they'd wandered around for a bit, aimlessly. Miss Rose, her mug of coffee, and her cryptic-looking book of the day were also missing from her usual spot at the kitchen counter, and Crawford had locked himself in the library (actually, it might have been an office? Which was worse. He couldn't tell with the mess of books and loose leaf papers everywhere). The dojo was theirs for the time being, and after they'd scarfed down whatever they could find in the pantry (Hardy took to a package of mini cookies, and Isaac found some rice cakes), Hardy had all but gripped him by the scruff of his shirt and tugged him to the designated sparring floor.

"Just show me what you've got!"

"You don't wanna see what I've got."

Hardy's demeanor shifted, relaxed, smirk shifting to a toothed purr. His eyebrows raised and fell. "Oh yes I do."

What? They were talking about sparring, right? Why did he- oh. His cheeks flushed. "S-sh-shut up! Don't s-say things like that! Wh-what are you even-?"

"Well maybe I'd shut up if you'd squared up!"

Isaac closed his eyes, stood silent and still and simply breathed. He'd seen Isabel do it in the past, a few times, when a mission got tough, when she had to focus on her drive and not her bloodlust. He took that memory, let it flash before his closed eyes like a guide. He could see her body freeze, tense, fists clench as her aura crackled between the gaps in her fingers. Like fire, like flame, it'd consumed her hands, her arms, acting less like the colorful gas it was, more like a spirit at the edge of unbridled power. He opened his eyes.

Hardy was smiling, like a friend, like they weren't getting ready to duke it out, then tensed as he had before, clenched hands raised in the defensive. "Now we're talking. Hit me." His deep emerald aura circled around his shoulders, but it wasn't concentrated, not that way Isaac's was.

He leapt at Hardy, one fist raised, let a small surge of energy collect at the flat of his fist. He was fast- Hardy was just faster. Isaac blinked and he was gone. _Wait, what?_ His punch fell limp through the air, hit nothing where he should have hit something. His brain didn't catch up until a small tap to the back of his head sent him stumbling a few feet forward. Isaac squeaked, and twisted around on his heel, shifting his other foot to catch his fall. He raised one hand to his head and set his eyes on Hardy, who was snickering at him from where he'd once stood, hands in his pockets. He looked innocent. "Hey! Was that really necessary?"

"What? It was a love tap!" Hardy winked.

Isaac bit down on what would have probably been an undignified sound, pink cheeks flaring red. "It was an insult to injury!"

Hardy shrugged, then raised one hand to wave him closer. _Once more._

Isaac took the invitation and lunged again. This time, he'd focus on watching Hardy, not hitting him. He readied his fist as before, steadying the stream of lightning itching at the tips of his curled fingers. He threw the punch, Hardy ducked, but this time Isaac was prepared to follow. "Gotcha!" He grinned, following Hardy's step to the side with his other fist- might not have been quite as powered as the fake-out, but still enough to land a good hit.

Hardy gripped that fist in one hand.

Isaac's eyes widened, and he raised his knee to Hardy's side, only to find himself latched on both sides of his body. Their noses brushed. Hardy was grinning at him, wincing all the same, but grinning. _Too close, too close, too close-! Isaac, calm down. He's having a hard time holding you, right? You can break out of this._ "Hey, Red."

"Stop" Isaac's nose twitched "calling me that!"

"Would you prefer Strawberry?"

"Shut up!"

His other fist wasn't powered up anymore, wasn't cracking with electricity, but his aura still collected there, still flared, and Hardy only had two hands- he just needed to swing. He took his other hand and aimed for the stomach. _Don't dodge!_ Isaac kept his eyes on Hardy, squinting but never blinking as his other fist came upon its target. Hardy blinked and looked down, not soon enough, and hissed when Isaac's punch landed- but he could have been more hurt. _I'm weaker for some reason. Why?_ Their eyes met, and before Isaac knew it, his back was to the floor, and Hardy had a knee at his chest, towering over him. "I'm impressed you managed to land a hit on me." Isaac tried to move his wrists, but found both pinned by Hardy's hands. All at once, he was reminded that a fist-fight with Hardy was probably the equivalent of a fist-fight with Ed- he had more raw power, but they were trained, molded. He was somehow still learning. "You use electricity, huh? That's pretty cool."

"Hardy," he cringed at the strain in his voice. "You're a- a jerk. H-has anyone… told you that?"

He chuckled. "All the time."

Then he paused, brows furrowed, and glanced down at his knee, still lodged into Isaac's abdomen. "Hey, dude?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you… like, in pain?"

"A great amount, yes."

"Ah."

The color drained from Hardy's face, once wide-toothed, playful grin falling. He moved his leg. Isaac glanced down, trying to see exactly what had caused such a sudden change- well, blood would certainly do that.

Oh. Oh crap. Blood!

Isaac gaped, body freezing as deep red soaked his shirt, seeping through the seams, dieing the blue stripes an even deeper purple. Hardy's knee was covered in it, bend of his jeans soaked. Of course he'd been feeling weak earlier… he still hadn't healed completely. Hardy screeched and jumped up, hands at either side of his head, apologizing and apologizing, eyes wide, moving as if his body had frozen and was thawing under the heat of panic. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I completely forgot about your stitches! Ah!"

Isaac would have sat up, would have told him that, while he was annoyed, he didn't blame him for forgetting, but his abdomen felt like it was tearing itself apart, which it literally, probably, was. He grunted and raised both arms to cover it, stop the bleeding. It wasn't as bad as it was when it was fresh, but it sure hurt plenty, more likes a dull knife dragging across his open wound and less like a chainsaw just there all the time.

"What's all of this racket?"

"Crawford!" Hardy was practically leaping up and down in his frenzy. "I-Isaac! Help Isaac! I didn't realize-!"

There was a heavy, gruff sigh, and then heavier footsteps against the polished wood of the living room, then the sound of sticky steps as Crawford stepped onto the mat. Isaac yelped as he was hoisted- yes, hoisted- over a very broad shoulder, right where the wound was. "Ow!"

"Stop complainin' or I'll give you somethin' to complain about."

Isaac's face continued to contort following every degree of pain he was feeling, but he fell silent, crossing his arms indignantly, painfully- honestly it wasn't worth the effort, but he did it anyway. Crawford took to the staircase, stopping only to give Hardy a look. What look? Isaac didn't know. He couldn't very well see, but Hardy definitely knew the look, and was scared of the look, and snapped into gear with almost military-like rigidness. "Y'lall need to be more careful next time, ya hear me?"

"Yes! Yes sir!"

* * *

Crawford was surprisingly good with his hands, for a man of his size and- Isaac glanced at the size of his bicep- clear strength. But he handled Isaac's stitches with kit hands, and on top of it, had him patched up in seconds. For as painful an injury as it was, for as painful as it was to be reopened, Isaac had been anticipating fix-up to be more straining. Well, that wasn't to say there was no pain involved, and Crawford had to threaten him a good handful of times, with all the twitching and hissing and jumping he was doing, but it was still not as bad as he'd been expecting it to be. He turned his eyes to the glass-doored cabinet, where Crawford was busying himself scrummaging through the collection of first-aid products. "Clara made a few mistakes the last time she changed your bandages. She used t' make 'em too tight, now they're too dang loose."

Isaac glanced down at his wound, now open to the world with his blood-soaked shirt discarded somewhere to the side. The stitches were swollen, two lumps of flesh sewn together across the length of his abdomen. It made him uncomfortable looking at it, but morbid curiosity took precedence over disgust. He raised one finger to the blue string weaving in and out of his skin like a hemline, wincing when the feather touch stung.

"Well don't touch 'em, ya idiot."

Isaac smiled awkwardly, apologetically, and Crawford waved him off as he approached the bed, bandages in one hand. "Lift." Isaac raised his arms, and Crawford bent forward to run the gauze of the wound. It was definitely tighter than when Clara did it, and more uncomfortable, but he could breath, so he wouldn't complain.

"Where are Miss Rose and Clara?"

"Out picking herbs. I'm gonna teach Clara how t' make some temp'rary remedies."

"Wait, you're the medic?" Crawford cocked an eyebrow, and Isaac laughed- another nervous tick. "I mean, I guess I just assumed-"

"- it was Rose? I get that, what with all that nurture bull she pushes," Crawford tightened the last round of the gauze, reaching to the side for some tape to hold it in place. "But you'd be wrong. She's a bookworm, not much've a field operative."

"And you are?"

He tapped the scar over his eye, straight down the top lid to the bottom, almost the length of his nose. "One 'f the best."

Isaac frowned, reaching up to touch the bandage over his right eye, fingers brushing the edge at the side of his ear. Crawford pulled away and got to cleaning up the mess of the bloodied bandages that'd been tossed to the floor in haste. He was so tense all the time, so on-guard, at least he looked like it. In his time at the boarding school, he'd felt he'd gotten to know everyone, at least to a reasonable degree. He trusted them not to slaughter him in his sleep, and he ate dinner every night with little to no intrusive thoughts about the possibility of the poison and its potential mask as the onion powder dusted over his plate. But Crawford- Crawford was still a mystery. He kept to himself, kept away from the kids, and scarcely interacted with even Miss Rose. The few times he'd seen him around the school, Crawford was either brooding over a beer in the library (office), preparing dinner with a knife far too sharp to not incite just a bit of fear, or scowling at the occasional sparring match, when Miss Rose had to take a call and wasn't available. "I just didn't expect the guy who looks like he stepped straight out of an Old Wild West movie to be the team medic."

"I learned outta necessity." Crawford tossed the bloodied bandages in the trash, then twisted the sink on and got to washing his hands, pumping the soap twice.

Isaac frowned. "You've been through a lot, huh?"

"You will too, by the time the world's through with ya." Isaac turned to the floor, eyeing his hands, running along every scratch, every bite mark, every bit of dry skin that was healing. He'd seen more war, more pain and more power than he'd ever witnessed before in the month he'd been away from home. The spirits in Mayview, they were tame for the most part. Things were quiet. Sure, there was the occasional problem child, but outside the barrier, things were so much worse. He'd been attacked in his sleep by a creature that could shapeshift from one huge claw to a drooling eye with a mouth. He'd seen spirits three times his size swallowed whole and digested like bite-size chocolate bars. And then the monsters- the one that took that gash out of his stomach, left him bleeding in a city park, nearly made him blind in one eye… he grimaced.

Then, there was a hand at his head, ruffling the spike and mussing his hair until he looked like an unkempt toddler. He blinked, and Crawford was giving him an old-fashioned, country-man grin, having somehow lit a cigar in the time Isaac had been contemplating that sting of fear in his chest. "Just do yourself a favor…" Isaac's brows furrowed. Crawford's grin widened. "Make sure the world ain't done with ya today, or the next if ya can help it!"

* * *

He'd lost track of time, lost track of how long he'd been there. A week? He'd stopped counting after Day 14. His wounds were healing… somewhat. His stitches had started to look less like two conjoined clumps and more like blended skin with the tattoo of a string running along pale white. He'd still have to resist pulling on it sometimes, and when he didn't, Clara would hit him for it. His eye was still bandaged, but Crawford said he'd be clear to remove it in the next week. His food poisoning had long since passed, and he was enjoying the benefit of eating actual meals again- his muscles and bones had been fading, but he was as healthy and thick at the waistline as he used to be. It helped that Crawford was a good cook.

Miss Rose had trained him a few times, one-on-one; after the sparring incident with Hardy, and a good scolding (complete with parental pointing finger), she elected herself as his partner instead ("Since you kids don't know how to hold back, yet…"). She was an odd woman, spent most of her time with them instead of musing over spectral artifacts, which was, as he'd understood it, her actual job. Instead, when the three of them managed to wake up in the morning, and somehow manage to carry themselves out of bed after that, Miss Rose was always waiting with some kind of activity for the day- cryptic-ancient-language translation, spectral shot practice, backyard track running, sprinting, and hurdling, to name a few. And at the end of each day, she'd ride them to brush their teeth and wash their faces. Isaac objected to this the first night, after all, he and Clara were thirteen, and Hardy was sixteen, surely they could manage so much on their own. Miss Rose then gestured avidly to Hardy, and informed him that she'd once thought that, too. With a smile, of course, but Hardy still grew red at his nose and swatted at her.

Hardy was a huge flirt, quick to tease him and poke him and squeeze him half to death if he so happened to feel like it, but he was cool, and nice, and he'd apologized profusely for breaking his wound open. When they were bored, with little else to do, they'd often times lay around on the living room couch, Isaac watching the latest episode of the animes he'd come to miss dearly in his time as a runaway- felt weird to think that, to acknowledge that was truly what he was, that he matched its definition- and Hardy lounging back with his feet in Isaac's lap and his head in Clara's lap (assuming she didn't have medical training to attend to) with a magazine in his hands. Not surprisingly, those car-themed magazines had belonged to him.

Clara was a little more like Miss Rose, but not quite. She was headstrong and nosy like their mentor, but she was also bubbly, and a tad ditzy, but she was smart, and just as Hardy was, touchy-feely. When they hung around together, when Hardy was off doing something _probably_ stupid and dangerous, like seeing how many times he could ride the rail down the spiral staircase, he and Clara found time to lay around on their phones together in their joint bedroom. He'd scroll through some fanart and she'd ask him about the show. He'd go for tens or twenties of minutes, just talking avidly about his favorite shows, about the K-Dramas he'd gotten himself invested in somehow. She'd nod along, ask him to repeat names and characters, show her pictures, show her clips. In turn, he'd ask her about her interests, and oddly enough- she loved superheroes. She had a few favorites, but they were kind of unknown, heroes he'd never really heard of before, but he never told her that. She'd site her favorite comic issues and hand him some of the volumes she owned, stacked not neatly, but organized, on a bookshelf on the wall opposing the bed. She'd watch him read the first few pages until, inevitably, they'd hear a:

THUMP. "Ow!"

Followed by Crawford yelling or Miss Rose nagging. Then, it was usually dinner time.

He liked it. He liked the flow he was in. He like the people around him. He was happy here. But, as he'd always remind himself- he didn't leave Mayview to be happy. He was on a mission, he had a purpose. This was a punishment, and as it was he shouldn't have dwindled there as long as he already had. There were spirits to help, ghosts to cheer up- he cringed… monsters to take down. There wasn't a night that went by that he didn't dream about it, that he didn't see the way Spender's face dropped, or the clench of Dimitri's teeth, or the uncharacteristic frown on Ed's lips. He heard Isabel yelling at him, knew everything she was saying was right- about him being a traitor, about him being hopeless, about the fact that he should have been in that cell with them, that he'd nearly gotten them all killed or worse. He deserved to be an outcast. He deserved to be shunned and cast away. He deserved to meet the bloody end of a monster's claw.

And then he'd feel Max.

He'd feel his finger jabbing at his chest, smell the metal on him and the rust and the hydrogen peroxide below his band-aids. He'd see his narrowed eyes, the danger in them, the anger and hatred and disgust- everything he knew he'd practically asked for.

" _I've never cared less about a person in my life. You think you can read me the way everyone else can read you? We're not even friends."_ Isaac cringed every time. " _We never were."_

He was there to suffer. He was there to spend however long he lived pushing himself to the very limit, to make up for all the pain and fear he'd caused. Because even if the club didn't care about him… he wanted what was best for them.

There was humming, soft, sweet, and yet it wasn't shy. Isaac paused, peeking around the corner. On the other side of the open door, Clara swayed around the room, folding their freshly-cleaned bedsheets with a lack of grace, and she made it look fun. She was certainly the source of the humming, if the music blaring from her small radio was any indication. He took a moment to process the soft rhythm, the fuzziness of the sound, then felt like a total idiot for not having recognized it sooner. Once Upon a Dream. A took a cautious step into the room, careful not to scare her, because he had a feeling a scared Clara was not a fun Clara to deal with, and he still didn't know what powers she did or did not have. He coughed into his hand, figuring that was polite and unshocking as any greeting could be, and she turned to him, surprised.

Then, a moment later, she grinned at him, and gripped him by the wrists.

He inhaled sharply and she swung him around in a tight circle, and when he opened his eyes, only then realizing they'd been shut, she'd wrapped two ends of the bedsheet around his throat, like a cape. "Wait-! What-?" She ignored him and his unvoiced question, and instead took to setting one his hands at her waist, then took his other hand in the one she hadn't set at his shoulder. It was like this that they began to sway.

"I know you, I walked with you once upon a dream~!"

"Wait, why are you leading?"

"Because you obviously don't know how!"

He snorted, then laughed, and that laugh grew even louder, more obnoxious, and Clara danced him around the bedroom. One moment, they were at a corner near the windowseat and the parted curtains, and the next they were adjacent, by the door to the small bathroom the three of them begrudgingly shared. She was quick, and through all of his laughter, it was hard to keep up. He tried to breath, had to struggle to get a word out. "H-hey, I s-still have stitches, you know."

"Yeah, yeah, and they're pretty much healed, hush."

The song carried on, and so did they, twisting and turning around the room, ends of the bedsheet flying with every to and fro, with every step they'd take. Clara fell into a fit of giggles not long after he'd stopped, and then he was right back where he was before, breathless.

The next note, Clara let go of his hand, and for a moment he thought the song was over. But the next, his hand was in another, more callous. He jumped back as Hardy took Clara's place, gratuitously. He took one look at Isaac's cape and smiled. "Fancy meeting you here, Prince…?"

"You know my name, you dork."

"That's an awfully long name, my lord."

Isaac groaned and Hardy took the lead where Clara left it, moving faster, but rougher, across the bedroom floor. "Why am I always the one being lead?"

"Because you don't know how to lead."

"Where did you learn ballroom dancing?"

"Well," Hardy snickered. "Maybe I don't know ballroom dancing-" With a flick of his wrist, Isaac twirled to the side, only one hand latched dangerously to Hardy's. "-But I know the tango!"

Isaac shook his head clear, laughing to himself.

Max. He had to blink thrice. When he opened his eyes, for a moment, just one fantastic, single moment, it was his hand he was holding. He could feel the tips of his fingers brushing like love against the palm of his hand, touch the square of his wrist. The face, oh he missed that face- the downturn of his cap and the upturn of his lip when he smiled, when he was happy. He was momentarily breathless, watching the world around him spin as Max tugged him in, caught him in a turn, took him closer- he could have memorized that pale blue in his eyes.

And then his outstretched hands fell to Hardy's chest, and he was lost again.

Hardy took one look at him and snorted. "What, did I spin you too hard?"

Isaac batted his eyes- er, tried to clear his head. "Wh-what? No, why'd you ask?" He took a step back, retracting his hands slowly, so no feelings were hurt. _That was unreal._ He almost felt stupid, guilty, like he'd been fooled twice and went back for a third round. But he hadn't. There was nothing there but a memory, or some rose-colored version of it, anyway. He just couldn't seem to shake how naive, how silly he felt. He must have been- silly, that is. He was dwindling where he shouldn't have been.

"You're red, like, super red, man."

Clara tittered and pressed a finger to his cheek, which he swatted away with one hand, two when she pressed harder. "You're so cute! You look like ya ate a handful of beets!"

"Maybe I did!"

"I certainly hope not, we need those for dinner tonight. Otherwise we'd have to use you. Chop you up and throw you in some stew, how's that sound."

"Awful."

"Yeah, well so does eating a handful of raw beets, but apparently you did that."

* * *

The cafe was perfect for a writer, really, so it wasn't a wonder how Suzy found it. Quaint little place atop a small body of water outside the patio. The tables were small, and round, and metal with a clear glass piece set perfectly within its melded edges. Condensation had begun to leave a small circle of wet around the bottom of his cup, filled halfway with iced tea before a waiter came over and refilled him for him. He was mostly done with his cinnamon roll, but Suzy was yet to touch her salad; this was funny, funny as in odd, considering it'd been her idea to come to her favorite little cafe.

She sat across from him, elbows on the table as she stabbed at salad with her fork. She'd been quiet, for a while now, and it wasn't just for the duration of their meal. She'd been this way, or the opposite end (louder, more rambunctious, bossier than usual), for a good month now, or a little over. Collin scowled, leaning back in his chair because he knew some explanation was coming, probably. Sure enough, she turned her gaze to him, big eyes looking tired, and dull. Not her, not like her at all. Her lips parted, and he fixed his attention on her- she had to have his full attention. Anything less, and he'd be sorry. He was sure of it. This was Suzy.

"Hey, Collin?"

"Hmm?" It was coming, the big reveal, the reason she'd been even bossier than normal-

"It's been two weeks." She frowned, and looked back to her salad, stabbing, perhaps with more vehemence, at a cherry tomato that'd earlier escaped the wrath of her fork's pointed ends. "They still haven't found him."

Collin sighed. Guess he'd underestimated her tendency to project. _Well, if nobody else is gonna sit her down and ask, guess it's up to me… per usual._ He leaned forward, crossing his arms over the table. With one hand, he set his plate and cup to the side. "Hey, Suzy? Ya wanna just tell me what's actually bothering you?"

She blinked, and for a moment, when their eyes met, she looked scared. But in the next she had covered it up with that look of hers- the nasty one, the one that scared anybody but him, him and Dimitri. He had a feeling that the salad would have cowered, had it been sentient. "That is what's bothering me!"

"I mean, yeah, it's one thing, but it's not what's bothering you the most."

Her hand paused amidst the brutal stabbing of a helpless carrot, coming to a rest at the side of the plate. She was silent again, and that always unnerved him, more than anything. He kept an eye on her, watched the way her hair fell into her face, how she didn't reach up to fold it behind her ear like always. She looked to him, and frowned, and set both her hands in her lap. The tips of her ears turned red, and though her face read serious, it wasn't intentionally threatening. In fact, she looked almost… Collin leaned further in. "You are never to repeat what I'm about to say to anybody, do you understand me?"

He raised one hand. "Journalist's integrity." Suzy's cheek blew up. He smiled. "My honor."

The red of her ears spread to her nose, but she snorted, and smiled, and he knew he'd given her reassurance. Soon enough, she sobered up, she frowned again, and her eyes fell to the hands she'd clasped together in her lap. "It's Dimitri. I… miss him." He hummed, brows furrowing, but he nodded for her to go on. "Ever since we found out he was a spectral, it just feels like," she grew quiet. "It just feels like we never really knew him, you know? Like our entire" she waved one hand around, realized she was stalling, and set it back in her lap "thing was a lie."

He squinted. "Our friendship?"

"Yeah!"

Collin sighed, and massaged the bridge of his nose. "Oh, Suzy."

"I mean, the proof is in the pudding! He's out having adventures with the activity club all the time now!" Her hands parted to wave around frantically; he might have been embarassed had he not been so used to being publicly humiliated- by Suzy. "He never drops by alone, ya know? It's like, I don't know. It's like he never really let us get to know him to begin with so," her eyes grew dim again, fingers clutching and kneading one napkin that lay unused between them. "So how could I expect him to, ya know… remember us?"

Perhaps he was momentarily delirious, or maybe she'd simply driven him insane. He'd even entertained the idea that somebody slipped something into his always-dutifully-full iced tea when he wasn't looking. Whatever happened, it was a lapse in sanity, and he'd do well to avoid another such situation.

He reached over and took her hand in his own, in surprise, she dropped the napkin. Her wide blue eyes were on him, watching him, he felt it, he knew it, so he glanced away, coughed into his free hand. Mayview wasn't supposed to be getting hotter, was it? They were riding the tail end of fall! How funny that, right then, he felt he needed a fan. "You're overthinking it."

"Huh?" Her voice was so small right then, so innocent-sounding, so unlike her. It made his entire body shiver.

"Spectral or no, Dimitri is Dimitri. I'm sure he's just spending some time catching up with them, so don't worry about it, okay?"

Why would he even say that. He had no clue. He'd thought the same thing, wondered how Dimitri was doing, how he was doing- if he planned on ever coming back. They ran into each other often enough, but Isabel (and sometimes Max) were always close behind, like a clique. Suzy was right, he hardly ever came around anymore. Lunchtime (with Isabel and Max) was about the extent of their interactions. Who was he to tell her what was going on in Dimitri Danger's head? Nobody! Nobody knew! The guy was a legend wrapped up in mystery, all laced together with a pretty bow tied in cryptic knots. He was lying to her! Straight up deceiving her! And for what?

Suzy squeezed his hand, then pulled back, setting the backs of her wrists at the edge of the table, fingers curling in. He hesitated to move his own, fingers twitching, then hiding in his palm.

"If that were true, wouldn't he… try to stop by the clubroom once in awhile?"

What was he supposed to say? He agreed with her. She was right. For once in Suzy's life, she was right, logic exceeded stubbornness, and it couldn't have chosen a worse time.

He fell silent, words left him. All he could do was sit there and mourn with her.

* * *

Evening had fallen over the boarding school before he knew it, and sometimes, evenings meant laying back on the windowseat, feet splayed over Clara's lap while Hardy's head leaned against the side of his leg. He could hardly read a word of the book Miss Rose lent him (about mediums, mainly, and some other basics he hadn't caught onto before) in the light of the setting sun, but it was relaxing- he could fall asleep under an orange hue forever. Clara was taking a quiz, one of the bad ones from the preteen magazines she kept asking Miss Rose for when she went food-shopping. Hardy well-

Isaac winced as the bulky end of the yo-yo came around to smack him in the face. He hissed and glared over the side at Hardy, who was waving an apology and giving him the best sorry-looking face he could probably muster.

Yes. He was too content.

He had to remind himself- he didn't deserve this, _he didn't deserve this_. And nobody around him knew what he had done. Sometimes he thought about telling them, and that daydream brought him fear, fear and somehow relief. He could never really understand that part. Maybe it was the burden of keeping a secret, not that he'd been trying, things just happened. Something told him that wasn't it, though. Maybe he wanted to be outcased, punished, kicked out on the street like he'd planned all along.

He knew he deserved it.

But at the same time, why'd he have to tell them when he could just leave? What good would it do? They'd know they'd nursed a traitor back to health. They'd know they'd saved a person who should have been wiped from the world because he couldn't tend to his own wounds- natural selection. No, there really wasn't a reason to tell them, no reason to burden them with that guilt. He'd just have to wait until his wounds were healed, sneak away in the dark. Teenagers did it all the time in the movies, how bad could it be?

"Ah! Hardy!"

"Sorry!" Clara raised her foot where his yo-yo had nailed her, right at the ball, and gave him a swift, scolding kick to the head. "Ow!"

"Don't be sorry. Be better!"

"Okay, okay!"

Isaac exhaled through his nose and smiled. _Well, maybe I'll stick around a little longer._

Three knocks, solid and authoritative, came from the front door. Each of them perked up, heads twisting to the bedroom door, which sat ajar. Clara readjusted her glasses. "Well, that's odd. Nobody visits us unless they're, ya know, Cousinhood, and we have a secret knock."

"Well," Hardy shrugged, sticking his yo-yo in the back pocket of his jeans. "They might be new?"

 _No, I doubt it. If they're as secretive as the Consortium was…_ Isaac frowned and leaned behind Clara, reaching to move the blinds she'd been snuggling under so he could see. "Hey! What the-?"

"Sorry."

Just a little bit further, a little further, until- there! He pressed his face to the class, hoping to catch a glimpse of the front door. _Who could it be? Some guy who got lost in the woods, maybe? An angry squirrel throwing nuts?_ He finally got the right angle, could finally see just who was, quite angrily, pounding on the front door to what should have been a small private boarding school.

He wasn't expecting to see Mister Spender.

He gasped and fell backwards, sliding from the windowseat with no grace. Hardy and Clara watched him with mild interest, mild concern, and he scurried away from the window, climbing to the bedroom door on all fours. _Crap, crap, crap, crap!_ How? How was he here? He did he find him? _No, calm down, Isaac. Maybe he's not here for you. Maybe this is something entirely different._ Still. There was a chance, a chance Mister Spender could see him, that he'd want to drag him home- but he couldn't go yet. He had to hide.

He came to sit at the top of the staircase, back pressed to the wall just before the second floor ended and the walk to the first floor began. Hopefully Mister Spender couldn't see the top of the staircase from the front door…

"Isaac?"

"AH!"

He jumped, then covered his mouth with both hands. Clara tilted her head at him, and Hardy moved closer. They'd taken to huddling beside him, pressing their hands to the wall to keep them steady in their crouched positions. Hardy's nose brushed his hands where they covered his big, unhelpful mouth, so he inched back. "What's going on?"

He gestured for them to be quiet, and lay low, so they copied him and took to wall-clinging. Isaac glanced around the corner to find see Miss Rose looking out through the peephole, where she undoubtedly was seeing his old history teacher. Isaac swallowed hard. "That guy knocking on the door is Mister Spender, somebody from the Consortium!"

"And why is that a problem?" Clara kept her voice low, even if she didn't understand, and right then, he couldn't have been more thankful.

"Because," he squeezed his hands tight and grinded his teeth. "If he sees me, if Miss Rose tells him I'm here, he's gonna take me back to Mayview, and-and-!" From down below, he could hear the sound of the door opening, and the high-pitch of a woman's greeting voice.

* * *

To say Rose was surprised to see a Consortium agent behind the door was inaccurate. To say she was surprised to see one so soon, on the other hand…

With the way the kid had been talking, for how long he'd been away from home with no Consortium interference, she hadn't anticipated a visit for another five months, a year if she was pushing it. For a moment she doubted he was one, an agent. After all, they were in a home in the middle of the woods, in the middle of nowhere, perhaps he'd gotten himself lost and was in need of assistance? Well, it hadn't happened before, but there was a first time for everything.

She glanced him over again; no, this man was different. He was nervous, lips drawn between his teeth, not relieved, not smiling to find someone else. His clothes were too clean, shirt too tucked in the waist of his pants, shoes and pants unmuddied from the slip and fall terrain. No, he'd entered the woods and known exactly where he was going.

Rose cocked an eyebrow, set her hands at her hips, like he was an old friend, like she didn't know why he was here. "Hello!"

He was glaring at her, but she could tell he was keeping himself level, struggling to, anyway. She could expect a civil conversation, but beneath that was an anger, a righteous anger she'd known scarcely. She straightened up; it was unsettling, but she was no wallflower.

He took a deep breath, but she watched his fists clench at his sides. "Good evening, my name is Richard Spender." He either didn't think the Cousinhood knew who he was, or was playing dumb to avoid immediate conflict. She knew who him by name, but by name alone. He was Mayview's Defender, its own stubborn hero. Anything else, well, anyone in her line of friends had yet to meet him. As always, she'd be the first, she might have felt honored had she taken a moment to let that sink in. Something was important enough that the legend had come to her directly, important enough he'd willingly left his beloved city. Perhaps this visit wasn't what she thought it'd be. He paused a moment, probably just nervous. Rose didn't blame him, relations were tight. She crossed her arms, showed him she was listening, so he continued. "A few months ago, one of my students went missing."

 _His students? I don't recall Richard Spender being named a spectral master._ Oh. Oh, of course. That made so much sense! _That's why Isaac knew him by name!_ That's why he was here, personally. Her eyes widened, but she rid her face of it. Letting an opposing agent read you, it was a mistake, one she couldn't help but notice he was still making. Either way, the focus of the visit was exactly what she thought it would be.

"My, how unfortunate."

His eyes narrowed behind his shades, and she gave him a smile. "Yes… you see, the authorities tracked him to the Michitan City area, where he left a trail." Yeah. Of blood. "But soon after, he somehow disappeared."

"Get to the point. We both know there's something you're not saying."

Spender blinked, seemingly taken aback. He was an odd man; for someone with so much power, he was gentle, and came off weak. He recovered in a moment, shook himself straight, and she watched him grow stiffer than before. "My… colleagues and I, we traced him to Catriona Barrett's old residence, which I am aware was confiscated after your people recovered an artifact on the premises." She straightened up, well aware of where this was going. "If my assumptions are correct, and my student wandered onto Cousinhood property…"

"You think we have your kid."

His voice lowered, dangerously; the real Richard Spender stood before her. "And he needs to come back home."


	9. Chapter 9

"...we traced him to Catriona Barrett's old residence, which I am aware was confiscated after your people recovered an artifact on the premises."

Isaac frowned. He had to listen, listen close, hard to do when Hardy and Clara were whispering back and forth, hard to do when his heart was in his throat. He tried to tune it all out, mute the thumping and the hushed words and every exhale that came as his shoulder would rise and fall.

"Who is Catriona?" Clara's voice came low, but not low enough to mute.

"Don't know."

Their conversation fell off, so Isaac took to holding his breath- he needed complete silence. Rose's voice carried from the front door. Though he couldn't see her from the last step of the staircase, he could hear her, and her voice was level, uncomfortably so, the most neutral he'd ever heard her. He couldn't place the tone, there was no emotion to map to; she was consciously censoring herself, and he didn't know why. It unsettled him.

"You think we have your kid."

He waited on edge for Mister Spender's response, squeezing his thumb under his fingers, biting his tongue, entire body tensing. What he didn't expect, and perhaps what threw him for the biggest loop, was the deep, assertive power of Spender's voice…

... and that the only emotion he could map it to was anger.

"And he needs to come back home."

Isaac's heart dropped in his chest, not entirely unpleasant the way it had been since he'd known the feeling. He almost didn't believe it. After all of the lying, all of the secrets, everything and anything they'd put each other through because Isaac was a huge useless mess of a human being, it all paled in comparison to the cornered and covered impatience echoing in Spender's every word.

He wanted him home? It didn't sound right. It couldn't have been right. After he'd betrayed him, after he'd done nothing but cause the club grief, after everything the spectral world stood for nearly fell to ruin because he couldn't keep himself in check, and yet. There he was, at the front door, intent on taking him back to Mayview. He couldn't help it, he had to see it, to be sure it was Mister Spender, to be sure he wasn't being played for a fool again, see him standing at the door and know he wasn't wandering about in a fictive daydream. Isaac leaned forward, suddenly too curious, too wishful, too needing, to care that he was seen. He just need to poke his head around the corner, catch a glimpse, see for himself. It was in this spirit that he nearly fell forward entirely, how he found his entire upper body falling down the stairs fast. He squeaked and waved his arms around in a panic. Clara, as if by design, tugged him back to his rear by the collar. He winced and glanced up at her, head settled in her lap. Her purple eyes glanced him over, squinting at him behind her squared glasses. She readjusted them, and he gave her an apologetic frown. "What are you doing? We're trying to eavesdrop on your behalf, you loon! You nearly got us caught."

"Sorry."

She helped him to sit back up, and he rubbed the back of his neck, half in sheepish nature and half in pain. Had she been more forceful, he wondered if she'd have snapped his neck. Either way, it was good for him, kept his mind from wandering. He'd lost himself for a moment there and hadn't been thinking clearly. If Spender had seen him, it was all done for, his entire escape from Mayview was useless. He stretched his back against the wall and focused in again.

"Well, we don't actually have him. So, ya know, sorry about that."

Isaac's eyes widened.

* * *

Rose shrugged, and brought one forearm up to lean against the door, bucking her hip to the side as languidly as possible. He looked surprised, and she bit back a nasty grin. That would have been too much, not that he didn't deserve it. Presumably. She'd heard a lot about Richard Spender, a lot about his legend, but she'd also heard the man was weak-willed and hardly capable of his day job. He was a man who spent all his time on the Consortium, a man she didn't really care to go through the graces for. Not that he was wrong in his conclusion, but he had no proof, and even if he did, she'd give him proper hell before he could use it. She made a move to close the door with the hand that'd set at her hip. Not to her surprise, he placed his hand to the paneling and pushed it back open- with a vehemence.

He was scowling down from the three inches he had on her, aura flaring from his head to his shoulders to the curl of his fist. She'd pressed the right button, all right.

"Need I remind you that harboring a Consortium agent could well result in conflict between our two organizations? Have some sense!"

"Hah! A Consortium agent? Really?" Rose nearly laughed, she really did. It was that funny. She crossed her arms and stood up straight, kept her eyes on his so he knew she wasn't backing down. She'd never back down. Not about this. "It's funny you say that, because I've been thinking, and if I put two and two together about his lack of spectral training, his ignorance of your hoity-toity organization, and- let's not forget- the fact that it took you three months to locate and attempt to extract him…" She leaned up so they were eye-to-eye, and sneered up at him. "I'm going to make an educated guess and say this kid's blacklisted. And you're more than welcome to try and stir something up, Mister Spender, but if your boss wasn't extending a hand to help you find him, I have a hard time believing they'd start a war over him."

Spender faltered. Good, he'd do well to remember she didn't respond well to threats.

His face fell, anger, resentment, turning cold and fragile, lips thinning as his hand fell from her door. He raised both, trembling, and lowered his voice. "Please." He was begging. "If I could just talk to him-!"

Rose snorted. "You can talk to Isaac when Isaac is feeling well enough to talk," still, she let herself loosen. He was a teacher, same as her, even if his panic came from a very different place, at least, she surmised it did. He was welcome to prove her wrong, but she guessed he wouldn't. She almost kind of hoped he wouldn't. Her voice softened. "But for right now, he's safe. He's in good hands. That should be enough for you."

Spender drew closer, and she took a step back, one hand ready to ram him back if she had to. He wasn't welcome in her home, and if he took one step into her school, he'd know it. "What about his family! What about his parents!"

Rose exhaled, laughed under her breath, and pressed one hand to his chest, lightly pushing him back out the door. He watched her with wide, helpless eyes, and she almost felt bad. Almost.

"As far as I'm concerned, I'm his mother now."

She shut the door.

* * *

Isaac fell limply down the wall.

He'd known they were keeping secrets, but blacklisted? From the Consortium? There were a million reasons why and he couldn't pinpoint a single one, though it made all the abundant sense in the world. He raised one hand to his head, glaring down at his lap like it could tell him something, like what he should do, what he was supposed to think, but nothing came. Clara and Hardy had fallen deafly silent beside him, and they sat glancing at each other between twists in his direction. They were confused, and he had to admit he was equally, if not more, lost. So what, being blacklisted was new information, but it hadn't changed anything. He'd done more than deserve it, he'd practically owned it, made a fool of himself with a badge he wasn't aware he'd been wearing. Regardless of the _why_ , the _what_ was just as bad as it had been before. He'd still betrayed them. He'd still ratted them out to the school, the city, and anyone who'd listen to a junior high newspaper. Spender showing up had changed nothing, because there was no way they all forgave him… no way they wanted him back. He'd figure out the alter motive behind this visit later, but for right now, he had to sort himself out.

Clara inched forward to him and frowned. "Isaac, did yo- did you run away from home?"

Isaac reflected her frown, though his eyes remained fixed on his lap, and nodded. Behind Clara, Hardy started cackling. "Oh-ho my god! Isaac, I can't believe- that is just awesome!" It took Clara an eye-twitching moment before she whipped around and landed a very clear, very precise, warning fist at his forehead. Hardy yelped, and fell onto his back with a wince. Clara whipped back around, and for the first time, he could see her aura collecting around her hands. It was deep, purple, more of a wine than Miss Rose's jam, but she was similar in color, and equally as fierce if he watched her eyes go aflame.

"Do you realize what you've done? How many people must be worried sick about you? Heck, not to mention how illegal it is for Miss Rose to be harboring you in our home!"

He bit back his immediate response, that nobody cared about him, that there was one person (spirit) he could name that would want him back in Mayview. He sprung for the more logical response, what the tattered, bruised, and beaten Isaac would say, the one who'd learned to do things alone, the one who knew better than to think, for one second, that he deserved to go home. "I mean, I figured you knew. I'd guessed you would have pieced that together considering, ya know, that you guys found me all on my own. But I guess not."

"I wasn't there, Isaac! I didn't know!" Clara placed one insulted hand at her chest, lips curdling. "And you can bet if I did that you wouldn't be here right now!"

"Oh, so you would have left me to die, that's really moral of you."

"No, we would have healed you and sent you on your way back home! You're just changing the subject! Do you know how much trouble Miss Rose could get in for keeping you here!" Isaac fell silent. He was concerned, just a tad, that she knew him so well already, that he'd let her get that close. She had a point, though, for the wrong reasons. He shouldn't have been there. He shouldn't have stuck around for as long as he did. He couldn't argue, so he turned his head to the side, glanced away, down the staircase, down at the steps, wondering if Spender was still on the other side of that door. Rose took his silence and softened for it, leaning in to set one hand at his knee, maybe hoping he'd look at her. He didn't. He knew she'd look concerned, that if he looked at her and she was giving him a pair of big, sparkling puppy eyes, he'd be a goner. He'd fold. His resolution was standing on thin, splintering legs of wood already. "You need to go home. There are people back home who must miss you."

He couldn't, and they don't. "I don't even know how I could, if I'm apparently blacklisted like Miss Rose said." Doorman wasn't exactly capable of opening a door to him from outside the barrier. Though there had to have been a way for Mister Spender to get through, he couldn't have imagined he'd be allowed to be _in the know_ about it. As it was, the Ghost Train might have been a step over the line, just a necessary one at the time, not that it mattered since it was gone anyway.

"Your parents have to at least be worried."

Isaac couldn't help himself. He laughed. Clara sat back on her front toes, retracting her hand safely to her chest. He sounded bitter, bitter and so very sad. He knew he did, because he was. He'd just grown used to it. "Please," he shook his head, bringing his chin up to their eyes could meet, and when they did, he bit back a quiver in his lips. "They probably don't even know I'm missing, and if they do, they heard about it on the news."

There was a crack, a loud one. It took a moment to process, sounded like a strike of lightning by the fold of his ear, hurt like it, too. He reached up, and was surprised to find the skin at his cheek red, hot, blistering. She'd smacked him.

He blinked, waiting patiently for his mind to catch up with his body. Clara leaned away, coming to stand, aura seething at her still-raised hand. "Clara." Hardy's voice was low, a whisper Isaac wasn't even entirely sure he'd really heard, or if he'd said it himself.

"You're an idiot, Isaac, and you better be out of this house the minute your stitches heal."

She twisted away on her heel, and he wasn't sure which room she'd ran to, but he could hear the door slam, heavy like a machine right next door. He ran tentative fingers over his cheek, wincing as they brushed swollen skin, skin that might even bruise. Clara must have been strong, stronger than she looked anyway. He exhaled, and it was more of a laugh, a breathless one. Hardy was watching him, he could feel it, though he couldn't tell if the looks thrown in his direction were born of pity, concern, or question. Isaac's jaw squared.

He couldn't just return to Mayview, even if everyone somehow managed to forgive him, somehow managed to get passed what he'd done, what he'd tried to do- he still had that barrier to contend with. There was no getting back even if he did leave the school, even if he did decide to return, the barrier kept those useless dreams at bay. Things weren't that simple. _So,_ he heard Clara's voice, lingering like the mark she'd left on his face, _make it that simple_.

* * *

"Phew!" Rose sighed and fell back against the front door, knees buckling, though she kept them standing. Perhaps she'd been more nervous than she thought. He'd been so fierce, so determined that she return Isaac to him immediately… she almost thought she'd been wrong about him, almost thought he'd cared the way she did. But he had no leg to stand on, and she had nothing if not will.

Even so, she couldn't deny that her knees were shaking, or say that she was imagining the slight tremble in her hands as she pressed her palms to the door behind her. He'd unsettled her. For a moment, she thought he might have actually had something on her. _I should just be thankful he didn't. Seems Richard Spender is quick to shoot an unloaded gun._ She chuckled to herself, but knew she would have done the same. Bluffing was a game, and not everybody was good at it. _Not to say I'm good at it, either._

There was a shuffle from the kitchen doorway, and she was startled to find Crawford leaning against the woodwork looking somewhat morose… disappointed, and she knew why. Rose leveled him with a glare.

"What? Gonna lecture me now?"

"That wasn't right, Rose."

"I don't know what you're talking about." She huffed, and crossed her arms, and turned her cheek, and it all felt awfully elementary. Crawford stayed leaning at the doorway, and she felt her shoulders scrunch, nearly to the lobe of her ears. He was making her heart pound like heavy metal against an aluminum wall. It was rare that Crawford cared about things, after all, but she knew the few things he did. She just hated to know at the moment, be well aware of what he was about to say because this conversation had been building between the lines for around three weeks, stewing under every chat, every work-related discussion. She'd seen him eyeing her as she coached Isaac into hitting her, heard him grunting or mumbling under his breath when she'd pack for the day to take the kids herb-picking. She knew, she pretended not to, but she'd been unsure if he'd already cut through that lie, with eyes like his. He was a field agent, after all. Observation was key.

"That boy needs t' be with his friends an' family."

She scoffed. "Looking like that? How is he going to explain where all those cuts and bruises came from? Why he has stitches? How he got stitches without paying somebody anything? He stays here until he's healed!"

"What if he's got a scar?"

His tone was level, he was annoyingly civil and she hated it. He always knew how to handle her, like a teenager, like some stupid kid who knew better but was going through a faze. She couldn't even be mad at him, because she understood where he was coming from even if he was as wrong as wrong could be, and this time was no exception. Still, he made a point. If the time came, and Isaac's bandage came off, her excuse would have been null and void- not that it mattered, she never intended to give Isaac up anyway. Nothing he said would convince her she should. She scowled and turned away. He didn't deserve the satisfaction of seeing her nose scrunch. He sighed behind her, and when he spoke next, there was a delicacy riding the coattails of his old west accent. "Rose, you ain't a mother. 'Least, you ain't his."

She tensed, and it was everything in her not to turn around and beat him senseless- heart stopping, mind-reeling, jaw dropping, because she hadn't believed he'd sink that low. Something in her chest snapped, and she was sure it was a heartstring, because he knew better, and he still said it, and it hurt like little else could. Rose swallowed, swallowed hard, and whipped around to face him, face verging on the edge of rage just to hide the dull pain pounding behind her eyes like an echo. He seemed undaunted by it all, like he'd known what affect it would have on her and somehow that made it a thousand times worse because he knew for sure, he knew what button he'd pressed and he'd done it to make a point. There wasn't a single dip in his brow, yet his eyes were annoyingly, mind-breakingly watching her with this… this care, this look that she decided he had not right to give her. Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at her sides.

"Well maybe his mother should have kept a better eye on him, because somehow he ended up in my care with no one else looking out for him!"

Crawford tipped his hat over his eyes. "He did have somebody lookin' out for him- an' you just turned that man away for the sake a' your own darn pride."

* * *

One week. It'd been one week, and he could already tell school would be less of the distracting haven he'd hoped for and more of a torture chamber intent on cornering him off with all his thoughts. Zoey greeted him as he swung in through the corner store door, and he'd ignored her.

His dad sat on the couch, clicking aimlessly through their cable deal's offered channels, and he smiled from ear-to-ear when he saw his son. "Max! How was school-?"

He all but threw himself on the couch beside him, slinging his backpack somewhere to the floor, somewhere he didn't have to care about it, and set his head at his dad's shoulder, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He said nothing because he didn't want to talk. If he had to talk, he had to face it, the obvious truth that was staring him down, much like his tool, the truth that felt like it was watching him everywhere he went, while he slept, while he (struggled) ate, while he watched Johnny and his gang make idiots of themselves like the buddy-buddy group they were. Spender had been absent all week, and Agent Day hadn't heard a word from him, though Garcia mentioned a text conversation (when Garcia had asked the club, because something was glaringly wrong with Spender, and he knew what it was). One week from having dropped them off at Mayview, like he wouldn't figure out why, like he wouldn't take all the facts and draw the obvious conclusion. Isabel and Ed might not have cared about whatever he was hiding, but his silence, coupled with Zarei's stone cold eyes on the drive home when he'd asked for confirmation- this was driving him up a very, very rough, sandpaper wall.

"It's the first time you've done this since your mother passed."

Max groaned, and his dad wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Max could feel his eyes melting a hole in his head. "What was the last thing you said to Mom?" His dad fell silent, and he understood. He didn't ask questions like this. He liked to avoid touchy subjects, but for once he needed this, needed to talk about this. Nobody else seemed to care quite enough. He didn't want to talk about it with them (with _her_ ) anyway.

"I told her I loved her before she went to work." His dad chuckled, and he could tell it was to lighten the mood, but there was darkness there, a darkness Max knew exceedingly well. "Hah, actually, I wish I hadn't asked her to change Zoey's diaper that morning, but in my defense I was making breakfast." He was burning the house down was what he was doing, but now wasn't the time to snark, and even if he wanted to, Max didn't know if he had it in him. Things had been weird, lately, weird in a way things hadn't been weird before. Guilt was always flaring like his aura in his chest, following him around like food poisoning, making his head ache. He just couldn't let this go, couldn't stop thinking about it, and it was getting to be ridiculous. He knew it was. He shouldn't have been this torn up, and he'd tried to blame it all on guilt, but there was something else there. He was mourning, and he couldn't stand it.

Max dug his head into his dad's shoulder. "We… I think Isaac's dead."

His dad fell silent, and he could hear Zoey creeping up the staircase, whether it be born of curiosity or concern. He knew they were watching him, that they'd been watching him since they'd found out he could see ghosts, and he hated it. It's why he never told anyone anything. He didn't want to be pitied. He wasn't a baby. He could handle things. It was just that this one thing, this one thing was new, and uncomfortable, and he had no idea what his stomach was doing ninety percent of the time anymore. His dad's arms came around him, and soon he was burying his face in his dad's chest versus his arm. "I'm sure he knows you miss him, Max."

Maybe that was the feeling in his stomach. Maybe he missed Isaac.

* * *

He'd run it all through his head that night, nestled between Hardy and Clara as moonlight pooled in over him from the parted curtains beside their king size bed. He'd figured it out, at least he thought he had… why Mister Spender had come looking for him. Part of him, the part that was still clinging to some future he knew would never be, that part of him keeled over upon contemplation, upon realizing that it was never about Mister Spender wanting him to come home. He'd been blacklisted, apparently, and if that was the case, it meant the big suits in the Consortium thought he was a threat; they'd want to keep their eyes on a threat. Mister Spender, well, he would have been the least suspicious agent to go snooping around for him, to be sure he wasn't constructing large storms over cities for kicks, or selling the paranatural world out (again). Well, now they knew he was in Cousinhood hands, and maybe, maybe that meant trouble was brewing.

Miss Rose had seemed confident nothing would come of it, confident enough that Mister Spender backed down, but he had a feeling this was far from the end. If the Consortium was concerned enough to send Spender after him, they were concerned enough to rile up whoever paid Miss Rose's bills (assuming she got paid, anyway). Now that he thought about it, the fact that he was being followed- could it have been the Consortium agents tailing him for intel? That made sense, too much sense, and it stung like a piercing nail to admit that to himself.

Clara was right. Maybe he was getting Miss Rose into more trouble than she let on.

Isaac squeezed his eyes tight, took a deep breath, and sat up.

* * *

He took one last look at the living room, and a familiar longing fell over him like a heavy humid cloud. He was strangely used to it. He could see the doorway into the kitchen, although the room was pitch black, and by no means easy to move around in. His eyes took to the couch, and he tried to memorize the way it felt to lounge back on it, head in Clara's lap while Hardy sat on the floor with his head resting at Isaac's calves. He wanted to remember the way Hardy messed with him, flirted even, ran his fingers up and down his leg until Clara would lean over and bash his hand with whatever medical book Crawford had suggested she read for the day. He wanted to remember how it felt to laugh with them, and how it felt to finally… belong somewhere. To be wanted.

His eyes trailed up the staircase, and he contemplated taking some medical supplies before he left, but these people had done enough good for him, he wouldn't take more without asking. He figured he'd remember Crawford's scary cocked brow with no issue, and he doubted the warmth of one of Rose's hugs would fall from him so easily. Even so, he hated to leave it behind. His hand clenched around Clara's bookbag, which he'd apologized profusely to her about, though she'd still been fast asleep as he'd taken it. It was imperative, he felt it important to have it (well, maybe it was more or less sentimentality, but he dared not walk that line of thought for too long, either way, he was taking the bag). Isaac shut his eyes tight, willing away any urge to shed a tear. He was doing a good thing, the right thing, and somewhere inside, he could feel King C humming along in agreement. He had to get back out there, enact justice on evil spirits, help ghosts, like he'd meant to. He told himself the truth, again and again and again, and still guilt was weighing on him.

It couldn't stop him.

Isaac turned around and reached for the doorknob, careful to unlock it as silently as possible. He wasn't expecting the lights to flicker on, or for somebody to cough in an engaging manner. He yelped, jumping away from the door and whipping around to face Miss Rose, who stood at the kitchen door with her arms crossed. She looked dead to the world, with the circles under her eyes (as dark as her aura), but it was the glower she was giving him that had his body snapping to shape. She had one finger casually at the lightswitch, and somehow that was intimdating. "Whatcha' doing, bud?"

Isaac leaned away, pressing his back against the door. He just had to be cool. He could still save this. "Wh-what are you doing up?"

Her upper lip curled. "Hey, I am an adult. I am well within my right to stay up til 11:30 on a Wednesday night sipping espresso out of my favorite mug, reading trashy magazines to keep impulsive urges to light my entire library on fire wrought by my own incompetence and lack of translating experience at bay."

Isaac blinked, and so did she.

"Are you okay?"

"I'm a perfectly functional adult, thank you." Rose took the hand at the lightswitch and used it to rub at the bridge between her nose, eyes flying shut. "Kid, ya know I stuck my neck out for you earlier today? I could quite possibly start a spectral civil war over you."

"Yeah," he mumbled, casting his eyes to his feet. "I know. You've been too kind to me. I don't deserve it." He turned around, one hand reaching for the knob again. "I need to leave before I cause you any more trouble." Because he would. He must have been a curse, he'd decided. It didn't matter who it was, he found someway to make their lives more difficult, or worse, or bad in general. He'd hurt them, he'd betray them, he'd do something and mess everything up because that's apparently what he did. He didn't want that anymore, want that for anyone, want that for himself. That's why it was better he head off into the night, never to be seen again. He'd only been there three weeks. They'd be fine without him, and any heat from the Consortium would (hopefully) follow him when he left, leave them be.

"Hey! You heard me, didn't you?" Isaac paused, and Miss Rose's voice, sounding so upset, so determined and yet so vulnerable, came again. "I don't care what you did or why they want you back, and I really, really don't care why you feel like you've got to hold the world on your shoulders-" He turned to look at her, head twisting over his shoulder. She was glaring at him, staring him down with a grimace on her face and this look of determination he'd only seen a few times on a few faces, determination that left no room for argument or confusion. "You're my kid now. I meant that. Nobody, and I'm including you, is gonna take you away from me."

Isaac blinked, and went to say something, only to stop, and he repeated that process two or three times before, finally, he could look at her and say "You don't even know what I did."

"Weren't you listening? I said I don't care!" Her voice cracked, not a lot, just enough for him to hear this rawness in her voice. She wasn't going to break, but she was on the verge. "Isaac, look, you're just- just a kid! And somewhere along the way, fate put you in my hands. I-I'm not going to just let you leave when I know you need me, when I know you need this school."

He frowned. "I'm strong enough."

"No you're not."

His lips thinned as he clenched his teeth.

Rose sighed, and uncrossed her arms, entire body slackening though she was still somewhat on guard. He could sense it in her, feel how tightly-wound she was. Over him. He didn't understand it, he wasn't sure he could. Not over him, not because of him. He'd done nothing but hurt everyone he'd ever cared about, everybody that might have cared about him too if he wasn't so useless. People might have wanted him. And for some reason, Miss Rose did. Hardy did. Clara did. Crawford might've. He wasn't used to it, and he still wasn't sure he trusted it, though he trusted them. Maybe it was himself he didn't trust; that might have been a fair assessment.

Rose's voice was gentle, and stern, and just the right amount of chummy. "As far as I'm concerned, it's you and me against the world now,whether you walk out that door or not."

Isaac's fist unclenched, and released.


	10. Chapter 10

When Max got up that morning (and by that, it means he tangled himself in his sheets and tripped out of bed like a graceless seal), managed to carry himself to the bathroom, and looked at himself in the mirror, he practically shrieked. He hadn't been aware a the bags under his eyes could so deeply resemble… mold? Was mold purple? Could mold be purple? His bags were purple. He'd grimaced, and ran both hands down his face. He knew right then and there that his day would be questionable in quality, not that it'd been up in there air after how he'd "slept" last night, if you could call twisting and turning in sweaty sheets all night with his eyes closed sleeping. Crust sat at the corners of his lids, which were heavy and blurry and moved in slow motion, but he didn't feel up to washing them clear of it all. Cold water on his face might wake him up, but it would rip him from the daze he'd let himself fall into.

He could see clearly, though his vision was obscured if he took too long between blinks, and still the world felt like it'd been covered in fog. It was calm, and quiet, and it gave one the false impression that nothing was wrong, that his world was exactly the same as it had been three months ago because his brain was still too detached to catch up with reality. Nothing could be wrong, because he was too tired to feel like something was wrong. But he knew. He'd stayed up all night because of how acutely he had been aware of it. He just felt numb. Everything was not okay, and he was almost grateful his nervous system would let him believe a lie.

Isabel flinched when she saw him come down the stairs.

Her smile was crooked and forced, and the wave was stiff, but she didn't ask, at least not until they were out the front door. To his relief they'd stuck around for a moment, he'd exchanged some playful sibling banter with Zoey (to the best of his ability). Isabel chimed in. They left.

"Did you sleep, like, at all last night or…?"

"If I did, I don't remember it."

"Any reason or did you just chug three cans of soda and a Red Bull?"

 _I'm not Ed._ He bit the response back, still aware enough to mind his venting system. He was snarky, but that nip would draw some blood; when his mind finally caught up to his body, the guilt that'd followed him for three months would fall over him like a blanket made of pure lead, and he didn't need an extra ton dropped on his head. Still, Isabel was the last person he wanted to discuss this with. If anybody was, for some reason, playing a small sarcastic trumpet at Isaac's death, it was undoubtedly her. She'd been less than concerned at his disappearance, so he doubted this was a talk he wanted to have. She'd rip that sleepless mellow right out from under him. But he knew her well now, he had to answer, or she'd pry, and that would extend the conversation far longer than he was in any mood to stand. He shrugged. "Spender dropped us off when we started seeing a lot of blood, remember?"

"Yeah, so?"

His eye twitched. He'd figured that would be the response. "... So he was clearly trying to protect us." He shuffled his feet and turned to walk. Isabel followed. His voice was clear, but sharp. He knew why. "He thinks Isaac's dead." It was still a little hard to say, but he managed without choking. Talking about the death of somebody he didn't know, of an adult he was unfamiliar with, that was easy. They were lightyears out of his life. But Isaac? They were the same age, almost, same school. They were… friends. Talking about him felt uniquely personal. He might have felt the same way hearing about another peer's death (that's what he told himself, at least). But the familiarity between one ended life and his made the topic hard to swallow.

Isabel snorted, to his surprise. "Oh please. Look, I've known Isaac for a long time. There's no way he let some low-grade spirit take him down." He blinked, and Isabel rolled both her shoulders, clutching at either of her back-pack's straps. "More likely than not, Mister Spender was just keeping us uninvolved with the Cousinhood. I don't know if you've heard about them yet but-"

He waved one hand to cut her off as politely as possible, heart rising so high in his chest he swore he was choking it back down. "Yeah, yeah no I have. What about them?"

"Oh," she seemed surprised. "Well, we were on their turf. That place got raided and subsequently claimed in their name a few decades ago. Just being there could have gotten us into serious trouble." Oh. So it was just an adult thing. They were kids, not even full spectrals, of course, Max nearly laughed, they couldn't be expected to get involved, they were too young to really understand. Well, that was infuriating all in itself, but at least it was an explanation, one with way less consequence attached. Spender had been gone a week because he was going through a process, probably proving Isaac was his student, providing identification, all that jazz. "Things get pretty heated between our organizations sometimes."

Max raised one hand to his forehead, huge, relieved grin splitting across his face before he could actively stop it. "So Isaac's not dead!" Thank the maker. Thank the world around him. Isaac had just been mistakenly picked up and handled like confused luggage in a large airport. If only spectrals could see that abandoned old house, they must have just assumed Isaac was one of them, seeking shelter! Heck, he was probably better than okay! He was probably all patched up! Spender would have him home in no time!

"No, but being in Cousinhood hands isn't much better."

The relief that'd lifted his heart didn't just dissipate, it cracked like glass, splintered into thousands of tiny pieces. Bled his lungs dry. He looked at her, hand at his forehead suddenly clamming up. Her eyes had narrowed, and if the straight line her lips were in were any indication, he wasn't about to like what she said next. She turned forward, stuffing her hands in her pockets, looking concentrated on the distance, but he knew her. She was trenches deep in thought. "If the Cousinhood have him, and he's told them he's from the Activity Club, they might keep him just to spite us."

"What? That's just petty!"

Isabel exhaled, but it sounded like more of a laugh. She gave him a small smile over the shoulder. "Adults are just as petty as kids are, if you pay attention."

* * *

Their walk to school was otherwise uneventful, and quiet. Max didn't feel like asking any other questions. He didn't feel he needed to. Not yet. It was Spender he needed to corner, Spender he needed to ask, whenever he got back. For the moment, he'd try to focus on schoolwork. At least he knew Isaac was still alive. It wouldn't be easy getting him back, but they hadn't really tried yet. He'd just have to tell himself that every time he settled down to do pre-algebra.

He was perfectly content feeding himself that mantra, until he and Isabel stepped one foot through the door and were immediately directed to the school counselor by a small tired-looking woman keeping post by the staircase. That wouldn't have been so weird if it was just one of them, but both of them? That was a suspicious kind of coincidence. The kind that screamed trouble.

Their suspicions were only confirmed when they reached the office, and found a rather large waiting line ahead of them. Maybe Miss Baxter went completely nutso? Maybe they figured the best way to handle her sudden departure to a capable family was to spread her students among other math classes? But that wasn't right. Miss Baxter was a seventh grade math teacher, and sixth graders and eighth grades alike stood in line with a hefty number of seventh graders. Also, Isabel pointed out to him when he'd mentioned it, she didn't actually have Miss Baxter for math. So they sat, and pondered, until eventually they'd both been called in, shared their names, and had been subsequently handed a rectangle sheet of paper.

It was a new schedule, and instead of eight periods, they had nine with one lunch period and a break between seventh and eighth. They looked at each other, eyebrows high, hands raised in half-shrug, half-question. "Guys." Isabel glanced behind them and gave an almost-but-not-quite-there smile, presumably because she was still turning the new schedule over in her head. Dimitri waved as he approached them from the other end of the hall, at least, the best he could with- surprise surprise, another schedule- between his fingers. "I take it you've got your new schedules."

Max and Isabel raised their papers in faint exasperation.

Dimitri raised his, too. "You also get put in this _Advanced Training_ class?"

Isabel took a look at hers and nodded. "Yep."

"Uh, no? I'm in something called _Training 101_?" Isabel and Dimitri peeked over his shoulder, then looked at each other, no less confused than they had been three minutes ago. Max huffed. "I take it this means you haven't figured out what's going on?"

Dimitri laughed with an air of chill about him, Max noticed, and he was sure Isabel had too, if the cheeky smile on her face was any indication. He very nearly barfed into his hand. "I was hoping maybe you guys had some answers."

Isabel stuck her paper in her back pocket, not even bothering to fold it. It almost made Max cringe. "Well, if we don't know, you know who might?" She turned around, expecting them to follow, which they did with little word. It didn't take a genius to figure out where Isabel was going, not when she started up the staircase. Max squeezed the paper in one hand, crushing it under his fingers in a small roll. Spender must have been back.

* * *

"This is terrible! This is awful! This is literally the worst possible thing that could have happened!"

"I mean, people could have died, Max."

"And somehow this is worse!" Max waved his hands around frantically, gesturing to the wall and the window and probably the floor at some point, pacing around in the space between the two clubroom couches. Spender sat at his desk, hands folded together, covering his mouth as he sat his chin on his thumbs, looking quite remorseful, perhaps even unconfident. Isabel leaned on her umbrella, kicking one foot behind the other to rest at its toes, watching alongside a contemplative Dimitri as Max lost his utter mind. She seemed to be getting a kick out of this, even if she'd originally been just as surprised as he was. "What is Johnny gonna do with powers? The rest of his gang? Can you imagine the destruction of public property? This is horrible!"

"If it comes to that," Isabel punched her open palm "I'll just have to whip them back into shape!"

"Actually," Spender raised one exasperated hand, brows furrowing. "The school will handle it through a series of diplomatic, informative conferences with their legal guardians and fair punishments." Isabel crossed her arms and stuck out her tongue. Sighing, Spender fell back to his seat, lifting the corner of the packet up to skim the list of names in alphabetical order, presumably separated by each period. "Things are going to be changing around here." Dimitri took one look at the stack of stapled papers.

"They pretty much just made you the spectral teacher, didn't they?"

Spender dissolved into tears. "I only have one history class, now! One!"

"That seems like a lot of pressure…" Isabel came around to the other side of the desk, hardly glancing for permission before she took the list of names and started turning pages with a frown. Max, having worked all the pacing out of his system, fell back onto the couch, throwing his legs over the armrest while his back planted itself on the cushioned seating. He was too tired for this, too tired to be thinking about his entire school being spectral-ized, and way too tired to be thinking about what a spectral class could possibly entail. Ghost hunting tips? Spectral-Tool relationship counseling? Spirit dissection?

"Doctor Zarei will be covering one half of the load, at least until we find a proper agent for the job."

Dimitri hummed and leaned against the other side of Spender's desk, glancing at the list Isabel was still reading over with one narrowed eye and a cocked brow. "Not to question the plan here, but what exactly is the end goal?"

"Um," Max sat up, swinging an arm over the back up the couch, squinting at Spender, who was currently running stressed hands through his tussled hair. "Avoiding war between spectral and non-spectral populations?"

Spender nodded. "That's right. We're trying to contain this, and for the moment, that means training these students, spectrals and non-spectrals alike."

Max sat up on his knees, laying his head in his crossed arms over the back of the couch. "Am I missing something? How are you going to train non-spectral kids about being spectrals?"

"We have no room to discriminate." Spender's fists clenched where he set them at his desk, and for the first time since they'd strutted into the clubroom, Max saw just how pale he was looking. "Regardless of their actual spectral status, we're operating under the guise that the attack on the school three months ago turned everyone."

Isabel finally set the list down and looked to Spender, eyes wide as she gestured to the packet. "What? That'll never work! Won't other kids notice when they're not seeing shades? Or auras?"

Spender leaned back in his seat with a soft thud, slinking down so far back that his rear end was right at the edge of the cushion, with a grimace as wide as either side of his restless face. "That's what I said. The plan is to reassure everyone who isn't actually seeing shades that their" he made air quotations "abilities… are simply taking longer to manifest."

Dimitri snorted. "That sounds unethical."

"It's awfully, horribly, remarkably unethical!" Yellow aura flared above the desk chair as Spender slid somehow even further down. "But we have no choice. At least not right now."

* * *

When Max got to Training 101, which was located in one of the largest classrooms he was sure Mayview Middle had to offer (and it still wasn't big enough), he wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Upon walking through the open door and seeing a plethora of cliques, loners, chatty strangers and groups of two, all looking confused, disoriented, and somewhat alarmed, Max concluded that this was indeed what he'd been expecting. The room was set up more like a college course in a university, with stacked rows of seats instead of flat floor, though the room was admittedly smaller than an actual university classroom would have been. There was a podium at the front of the class, looking hastily set up, if the unkempt wires were any indication. The whiteboard behind them was still meant to be written on in barely-legible dried marker, so he knew for sure that he hadn't walsted into an actual college course on his way to third period, but it was clear they were trying to accomodate a great many people in as few classes as possible, that translated into what would probably end up being a very crowded, unstable learning environment. Perfect. That's exactly what every kid wanted to deal with every day at 10am sharp.

He found his way somewhere to the back, searching for an empty seat in the rows and columns of wandering students, and settled on one at the very end of a line of five. Max threw his backpack down and pulled the seat out, only to feel a heavy tap on his shoulder. He turned around, and wasn't quite expecting to find Johnny Jhonny staring back at him, though the uncomfortable shoulder-poking made more sense. Johnny looked back at him with crossed arms and some kind of pout, and on further inspection, Collin was there too, hanging out a measurable few inches away from Johnny's fists. "Oh, hey guys." Max glanced around, suddenly concerned that he couldn't actually see the rest of Johnny's infamous gang of misfits. Not that he was particularly worried about getting a fist in the face after Hitball, but those dopes never traveled in groups any fewer than two. "Where's your intimate circle of life-long lackies?"

Johnny snorted, top lip curling as he glanced away. "Got put in different classes for some reason!"

"Really? That's a question you have to ask?"

Johnny raised a fist under his chin, and he snickered. "Careful with them words, buzzcut!"

"It hasn't been a buzzcut in months."

"I said stuff it!"

Collin stepped forward, setting one hand atop Johnny's fist, pressing it down and out from under Max's fragile jaw. He looked aggravated, probably a little drained. Max wasn't surprised to see a certain weariness in his face, as Collin looked often overtaxed on a good day, but this morning had been something special. From waiting in the longest line ever for the school counselor (took a good two-three hours out of the school day to pass out all the new schedules) to the chaos of rearranged and dropped and added courses, he was shocked to find somebody today who didn't look like they were regretting ever having rolled out of bed. Collin stepped between him and Johnny, not quite like a wall, more like a shoulder between confrontation. "Suzy got put in a different class, too." He leaned forward, and Max raised one ear to the side to hear him whisper. "What is this class, exactly?"

Max whispered back. "I'll tell you later."

It was then that Spender entered the room, coming to the front of the class to stand at the podium right as the cluck struck the new hour, and coughed into his hand. "Welcome to- erm." Nobody seemed to notice. Laughing awkwardly, he tapped his pencil at the side of the podium. "Excuse me." The noise of the classroom persisted, and Spender sighed. Stepping down from the podium, he quickly made for the exit, not even bothering to shut the door behind him. Max plopped down into his chair with a curiosity meaning to be dealt with, hardly paying Collin and Johnny any mind as they took the seats to either side of him. Surely Spender had dealt with worse in the past, right? There's no way this level of noise scared him- oh yeah, there he was. Spender pranced back into the room, a large textbook (looked to be from history, not that that was a surprise) in hand. He stepped back up the the podium, readjusted the microphone so that it was on-level with the desk, and dropped the textbook plainly down. The speakers screeched, and the students crowding the classroom like products of busy bunnies covered their ears, collectively groaning and yelping as the grating sound of abused technology filtered through the room. The crowds thinned out until everyone had taken a seat. Spender folded his hands over the textbook and smiled.

Upon fixing the microphone, he cleared his throat once more, and began.

"Good morning, class. My name is Mister Spender, though I'm sure a good portion of you have had one of my history classes in the past. Of course, holding classes this big is not typically my forte," he frowned. "And this is not history. I know most of us have been too scared to mention it outside of interviews with Miss Day, and some of us might have even convinced ourselves that it was all a bad dream. Unfortunately, on a quiet Friday at the end of August, our school was attacked by beings not of this world." The room grew amuck in hushed conversation, almost if not all of it in a silent panic. Max frowned. Johnny and Collin stiffened beside him. "I know that it was scary, and I know how hard it is to deal with it. I know some of you have been having nightmares, and some of you may even be sleeping in bed with your parents for the first time since you were a child."

Johnny's face grew red-hot, eyes alight as he stewed in himself, digging half his face into the palm of his sweating hand. Max had to hold his breath to avoid impulsively snickering. "I know you're still confused, and though it is a comfort to know we haven't lost anyone to those monsters, there's still a question of what they were, and" Spender paused, and Max was all too aware of the quiet of the room, because the whispers had died out, leaving just that thick gut-wrenching feeling hanging limply in the dead air. "...if they were connected to us." The club. Him. Isabel. Ed. All of them. "Well, they were."

The nervous chatter started again, and this time nobody even bothered to mind their volume. Kids turned fully around to ramble blindly to their classmates, and the kids who weren't talking before were freaking out amongst themselves, silently panicking where they sat. The classroom was even louder than it had been before class started, and Max nearly winced at the sudden amplification. Spender raised both hands, unnervingly still at the front of the classroom. Those that noticed settled down, and those that didn't ran out of steam and followed suit. Spender continued, though there was an edge to his voice where that had been empathy. That was gone, now. Max's frown deepened. "The details aren't important. What I'm here to offer you is answers- answers about why you've been seeing shadows out of the corner of your eye, why you see other kids walking around with clouds of yellow and silver and brown, any color you can think of. You see, after that night, each of you has aquired the ability to see what others cannot, but more importantly, the ability to fight the next time something like those things comes looking for trouble. I'm here to teach each of you what you need to know to defend yourselves, and the hows and whys of this new- _paranatural-_ world you can finally see. I'm here to teach each of you how to be a spectral."


End file.
